1145pm, Wednesday April 7 : Red shirts on bikes and pickups are still motoring down Sukhumvit towards Ratchaprasong. I just returned from the rally there, where the mood is definitely more charged and there are possibly more people than the previous night. The declaration of emergency seems to have prompted a mobilization with reds at least in Bangkok, rushing to support the rally. The Mcdonald's on the ground floor of Amarin Plaza was packed mostly with red shirts. It seems that finally some businesses in the area - especially the restaurants - have woken up to the huge market on their doorsteps.
I met United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) co-leader Jaran Ditta-apichai behind the stage. He said ‘’the government may win the battle here but will lose the war all over Thailand. I think within two days it will be finished – either parliamentary dissolution or a coup d’etat.’’
I met Chaturon Chaisang just after he finished speaking from the stage, and asked him what his message to the red shirts had been. Mr Chaturon was in former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s Cabinet and for a time was acting leader of the now defunct Thai Rak Thai party, Thaksin’s vehicle to power. But Mr Chaturon, a former ‘’October generation’’ student activist, survived the Thaksin era with his democratic credentials reasonably intact. He at first joined the red shirts, then dropped out and kept his distance, but on recent nights has been speaking from the stage. He does not wear red. He has always maintained that since the 2006 coup d'etat which ousted Thaksin was illegal, everything that flowed from that night's takeover was also fundamentally illegal - and emphasises elections as a benchmark of democracy.
While obliging a stream of red shirts who wanted to have their pictures taken with him, he said his message to them was ‘’You still have the right (to assemble in political protest), protected by the Constitution, but it must be peaceful. The government and the forces have no legal right to disperse you as long as you do not react with violence.’’
‘’I told them they are here to be arrested, they should greet the soldiers. There is no reason to fear.’’
I recalled he had given the red shirts a similar message in April 2009, the night before the army closed in on their main gathering and after a few tense hours they voluntarily dispersed. I asked him if he feared the situation would get out of hand and be a repeat or even worse, of the Songkran riots that had preceded that night when I had met him in the lobby of the Royal hotel just after he had returned from the UDD's stage.
He emphasized that the key would be if the red shirts ‘’stick together with peaceful means.’’
I also bumped into Chulalongkorn University lecturer Pitch Pongsawat, who blamed government spokesman Dr Panitan Wattanayagorn – a former colleague in the faculty at Chulalongkorn, who helped write the Internal Security Act – for being ''behind it all'' and not having enough experience.
‘’The whole structure of the Internal Security Act which has led to the emergency, is to fight the enemy in the name of the national security. This law needs an enemy. But these people (red shirts) are not enemies of society. This is not about national insecurity, it’s about the government’s own insecurity.’’
‘’I am not saying what Arisman Pongruangrong (who led the red shirts into Parliament on Wednesday morning, triggering the emergency) was right. But he can be dealt with using the normal law, the normal system of justice.’’
Dr Weng Tojirakarn passed as we were talking, and interrupted to tell me ‘’There are two kinds of wars, unjust wars and just wars. We are fighting a just war. Just wars always win.’’
I threaded my way beyond the stage to Siam Square, where red shirts were dancing in the streets. The immediate effect of the emergency decree has been to cement their solidarity. But there could be ominous events ahead. Just as ordinary idealistic supporters of the royalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) were in harm's way in 2008, ordinary red shirt supporters could also be in harm's way.