IF the whole country was this nervous when the Thai Rak Thai Party and People Power Party were dissolved, I can't recall it. Were there bomb explosions? Were there threats on judges' lives? Did we have sleepless nights fearing a civil war? After all, weren't those two incidents supposed to be the worst thing that could ever happen to democracy?
This is not to say the red shirts must be held solely responsible for the prevalent national anxiety. Nobody knows for sure what has been really happening underneath the surface. It could be that the recent bomb attacks were carried out by a third party. It could be that the government is making it all sound scarier than it really is, so as to justify the enforcement of the Internal Security Act. It could be because of a few loose cannons within the red movement. Or it could be that everyone is simply getting paranoid.
But whatever the truth is, this is another momentous juncture for the red shirts, after the Songkran riots last year nearly doomed the movement. The activists must be careful what they demand this time. And they must be even more careful whom they are associated with.
Thaksin's money is not worth dying for. It doesn't represent justice or democracy, as he has tried to make it out to be. And Thaksin himself doesn't represent democracy, despite once being a popularly elected leader. He's just Exhibit A of how disastrous it can be to mix up one's vested interests with those of the nation, or mistake an electoral mandate as a licence to cheat.
The red shirts, despite their origin, have evolved to become a force to be reckoned with. Their campaigns against military interference in politics and against "double standards" have made a lot of people pause to think and can help push Thai politics toward real maturity if carried out properly. But first, the red shirts need to detach themselves from Thaksin's billions.
Otherwise, the whole scenario gets too complicated: Thailand's poor are willing to sacrifice themselves for a businessman's riches so the country can get rid of double standards and bring about greater equality. The red shirts are entitled to love Thaksin, but they are not supposed to take the country to the brink just to protect his money.
Red shirt sympathisers will argue that this is not about Thaksin's money, that this final showdown is the culmination of injustice the country's poor have suffered over the years. They will say that the court verdict seizing more than half of Thaksin's wealth is just the last straw that broke the camel's back and brought everything to a head, including long-suppressed resentment caused by the parties' dissolution.
What transpires in the next few days will clarify the red shirts' motives and show if the movement can reform itself and become a truly ideological force. Their biggest challenge will be how to overcome their rivals' contempt that the movement will be able to achieve nothing without resorting to violence.
A peaceful rally may not produce anything concrete now, but if the red shirts are truly patriotic and democratic, it's their only option. It will be a big mistake to point at the yellow shirts' Suvarnabhumi Airport seizure in 2008, scream "double standards" and say they, too, can do the same. Democracy will only wilt if nobody cares to make a good example and everyone repeats the bad ones, claiming that "if the others can do it…"
It's the moment of truth for the red shirts now. Created to help Thaksin Shinawatra find his way back, but said to have evolved into something bigger ideologically, at least in the eyes of its sympathisers, the movement will be closely watched in the next few days for the real purpose of its being. And, having functioned on an anti-coup platform all along, the red shirts face the dilemma of how to bring down an enemy government without provoking military opportunists to do what they have always proclaimed to oppose.
In a few days, we will know if the red shirts will be able to abandon the glass house and find a real home.
