By Nirmal Ghosh
Thailand Correspondent
nirmal@sph.com.sg

 

HOW bad could it have been? A story from the street wars in Bangkok on Monday shows just how fortunate it was that more people did not get hurt or killed. 

The blast would have had a 500-metre radius. The red shirt who said he was ready to light the gas was also ready to die with it, an army officer told me.  

The officer who negotiated with the man has gone to sleep every night since deeply worried about what is happening to Thailand.  

Yet in the tenements that would have taken the force of the blast - and whose rabbit-warren flats produced the men who physically fought off the red shirts to get them away from the truck - they understand what the reds want and are not unsympathetic. Why not just have an election, and respect the result, they say.  

It started at around 6.30am, they said, when the red shirts drove the tanker up and parked it on the road outside the block of flats, roughly opposite the Piboonprachasan school. The fighting nearby, between the reds and the army, had begun much earlier, at around 4am.  

After the truck appeared, the red shirts announced to the residents that they should leave, because they may blow up the truck. According to eyewitnesses in the apartment complex – home to over 600 families – many did leave, but many poured out of their flats to find out what was going on. 

The locals tried to dissuade the reds from their plan, while some red shirts periodically leaked the gas from the tanker. Locals tried negotiating with the reds for two hours, from about 10am. But there was no progress, and they were getting jumpy because it was a scorching hot day, and the truck was sitting in the direct sun.  

Then some locals took matters into their own hands and several men armed with sticks and stones and guns, attacked the red shirts to get them to abandon the truck.  

There was a five minute melee (nobody was reported killed) and the red shirts retreated to a church a few metres up the road. At around 3pm a municipal fire truck appeared and doused the gas truck with water. An hour later an employee of the gas company turned up and drove the truck away.

Somsri, 68, who said she has lived in the complex for 42 years, has never seen anything like this. "I understand the army’s actions, as well as the reds. We don’t want to take sides," she said.  

Her son-in-law Vichien Kwankitpanya, 37, asked how he would explain the political conflict, said: "The red shirts want new elections. The yellow shirts support this government. But this government came to power not through an election but thanks to the yellow shirts." 

"The fairest thing to do would be for this government to call an election. Then whoever wins, the reds will accept it." 

Asked about their opinion of Thaksin Shinawatra, they said he had been a good leader. Government departments had worked more efficiently and in unison under his government. As for Abhisit, they were neutral on him but pointed out that he had not yet won an election.