Thailand, Red Shirts, rally, Constitution Day

For an overall summary of the rally and backbground for those not familiar with Thai politics see this AP story.

There were anywhere between 17,000 - 20,000+ at the height of last night's rally which was scheduled to stop around midnight.

Reuters has some quotes from one of the red shirt leaders:

"We are here today to request a change in the constitution because the existing one causes problems to the country. We reassure everyone that our rally will be peaceful and we have no weapons," Jatuporn Phrompan, a UDD coordinator, told Reuters.

"Our next mission is to expel the government," he added, declining to say precisely when larger-scale protests might start in the new year.

Thaksin addressed the rally around 7pm and spoke for about 40 minutes via video link from an undisclosed location.

Pravit in The Nation on what Thaksin said:

Thaksin told protesters the Kingdom would know no peace as long as double standards existed in politics.

Speaking from an undisclosed foreign location, Thaksin said, "people are fed up with double standards", adding that they were smarter than in the past and would not be fooled.

"Return democracy to the people, return wealth to the people and dignity to the country," he said.

BBC:

"In Thailand, democracy is weakened and politics is unstable," said Mr Thaksin, speaking from an undisclosed location.
...
Mr Thaksin told supporters that if his political allies won elections due by 2011 they would scrap the current constitution forced through by a military government in 2007.

"Today is a very significant day, the day we got our first constitution 77 years ago," he said.

"If the red shirts win the election, we will bring back the 1997 constitution and amend it and throw out the 2007 constitution."

AFP:

"There are several countries like France, Italy or Japan which sometimes also have political instability but they have strong democracies."

Matichon also has a partial transcript and Thaksin talks about the debt of gratitude he owes to the red shirts and that he would repay them by returning to Thailand not as PM, but to work for the people. He also spoke about a person who has no powers who orders others to do things - referring to Prem? Thaksin also referred to the red shirts being loyal to the monarchy and people shouldn't state so otherwise.

Pravit also wrote about the royal symbolism:

Thaksin, who was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and red tie and had a yellow royal flag flanking him, addressed his supporters, who lit thousands of pink candles and sang songs in honour of His Majesty in the evening.

BP: The royal symbolism was very noticeable from the video which was covered on the late news last night.

The Red Shirts seem likely to begin rallying again at the end of January once parliament opens, but we will have to wait and see when and why.