Thailand PM Gains Upper Hand in Protest Crisis /TIME

By Robert Horn / Bangkok
TIME Wednesday, May. 05, 2010

The troops were in place. Armored personnel carriers were at the ready. It was clear the crackdown was finally coming. At the start of the seventh week of anti-government demonstrations in the Thai capital of Bangkok, security forces were preparing to dislodge thousands of Red Shirt protesters who were barricading themselves inside the city's main commercial district. The Red Shirts, armed with grenades, assault rifles and other weapons, vowed to go down fighting. Bloodshed appeared inevitable. And if it came, its biggest casualty could have been the man who ordered in the troops, and who some regard as Thailand's brightest political star: Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

"In Thailand, the conventional wisdom is that you can not have any injuries, any casualties when dispersing a protest," Abhisit said during a weekend interview with foreign journalists. The setting was an army base in northern Bangkok where, because of threats to his personal safety, the Prime Minister had been living and working since the protests began on March 14.

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