The Bangkok Pundit has a good take on the PAD protests yesterday:

"The PAD staged a protest outside UNESCO office in Bangkok today. The Nation and Matichon report that about 1,000 attended while the Bangkok Post says the number was in the hundreds. . .

Significantly, Matichon reports:

'At 14.40 Abhisit invited top PAD leaders to the Phisanulok Mansion (PM's house). The PAD leaders included Parnthep Puapongpan (PAD spokesman), Kamnoon Sithisaman (appointed senator), Pipop Thongchai and ML Walwipa Charoonroj. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya ... and Sirichok Sopa [MP and Mr Abhisit's close aide: PP] were also present. The meeting lasted for two hours.'

The fact that Abhisit invited PAD leaders to his house suggests, if anything, that the PAD still have considerable influence over Abhisit. And this may make one doubt whether Abhisit's promise to ensure fair legal actions against both the Yellow Shirts and the Red Shirts is realistic.

By the way, the Bangkok Post said Chamlong "threatened to unseat Abhisit if he failed to protect Thailand's sovereignty". Would Chamlong not unseat him then if he escalated the PAD's cases over the airport and government house seizures?"

http://www.asiancorrespondent.com/bangkok-pundit-blog

Abhisit and his democrats are terrified that PAD's entry into politics with its New Politics Party will doom what little hope the Demcrats ever had of winning the next parliamentary elections. They know that they would probably had lost the election in Bangkok last Sunday to Pheu Thai had the PAD candidate not withdrawn. That means that whatver PAD wants, PAD gets. That's why the cases against PAD keep getting postponed. Abhisit is brown nosing PAD as much as he can. Which also means you can forget about reconciliation leading up to early elections because the last thing PAD wants are elections.

Just to give you some idea of how far and wide the present government is trying to tamper with the flow information on the internet, and thus control the news beyond TV and radio, there's a website called The Thai Report, which although no friend of the government or military, is certainly no conceivable threat to public safety or order.

The lead headline in today's edition of the the website is:

"PAD RALLY DEFIES EMERGENCY DECREE, GETS TEA TIME WITH PM ABHISIT."

If you click on the headline to find the story, however, what you get is this big green and red government censorship block.

Click to view attachment










It's just another example of the hypocrisy of this government and the degree to which it is trying to control the news everywhere in the country, including the internet.

The fact that Abhisit chose to meet with PAD at his home for two hours, after the group flaunted the Emergency Decree and took to the streets of Bangkok to demand "no surrender" on the Cambodian temple, clearly demonstrates the duplicity of this prime minister. The fact that the prime minister then chose to parrot PAD and reverse his own policy announced the day before, suggest how weak and vulnerable he views his political position, causing him to pander to every element he sees as necessary to keep him in the prime minister's chair, at the terrible expense of his own public integrity. The fact that the Thai censors saw it necessary to block this story suggests how precarious they must see Abhisit's and perhaps their own political position in the country.

http://www.thethaireport.com/thethaireport/index.html