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What will the turnout be for the red shirt protest on the weekend?
Mar. 09 2010 - 06:00 am View comments (0)

	0		How, many, people, will, turn, out, for, the, red, shirt, protest, the, weekend?

AFP:

The Red Shirts say they expect up to 600,000 people to attend this month's rallies, with people starting to gather from around the country on March 12 before the main demonstration two days later.

Patrick Winn for Global Post:

If they can actually summon one million people -- a huge logistical achievement -- then they won't have to. A million people don't have to torch buses and throw rocks at cops. They can sit down in the street, block Bangkok's already-miserable traffic and vow to remain until the government steps down and calls new elections.

AFP again:

Paul Chambers, a Thailand expert at Germany's Heidelberg University, said the demonstration and its ability to match last year's turn-out will be a "crucial event to prove whether their cause will persevere."

"Whether these numbers reach higher than 100,000 will be a good measure of their continuing political potential," Chambers added.

The Red Shirts said earlier this week that they expected anywhere between 400,000 and 600,000, with many coming from Thaksin's stronghold in the northeast in thousands of buses and pick-up trucks.

BP: First, the pick-up trucks are to around the logistical problems of transporting people to Bangkok. Unlike the PAD, UDD cannot commander and get people to travel for free on the train system. There are not enough buses to transport everyone and being solely dependent on buses means that if the government can cut off supply, well you can't transport the people. The pick-ups trucks are a much more decentralized way of traveling.

Second, numbers are crucial. If the red shirts turn out anything less than 100,000 it will be an embarrassment given the expectations and the rhetoric. 200,000+ is really what the red shirts want and need. This would be a large-scale protest on the size not seen since Black May 1992. It would be a real statement. The higher you get beyond 200,000, the greater the statement.

Third, government measures to block the red shirts seem futile. They may be able to search them and slow them down, but the red shirts seem destined to travel to Bangkok in advance, either Friday or Saturday. As it is there will likely be bottlenecks, but this may more likely be on the return to the provinces given the flow of red shirts into Bangkok will be over a 2-3 day period. The government cannot block off the city for 3 days in all directions. Hence, there is an incentive for scaremongering by the authorities/government to scare enough red shirts from coming.

Fourth, Red shirts lose out if there is violence linked to them and hence the reason for the guards to keep the red shirts under control.* If things get out of control, then anything could happen.

Fifth, the government is unlikely to fall because of the protests, but a large protest of 200,000 gathering with little or no violence (some small skirmishes akin to the red shirt protests in Bangkok pre-Songkran) will place significant pressure on the government and give UDD and also Puea Thai further momentum for the upcoming no-confidence debate.