Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Victory in Thailand for anti-gov't Red Shirts!

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS); BBC.co.uk
Thailand court ousts PM Yingluck: Thailand's Constitutional Court orders Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and several of her ministers to step down on abuse of power charges.
War on the streets of the Thai capital as Red Shirts agitate against political corruption in Buddhist Thailand alongside monks. Yellow Shirts are pro-corrupt gov't (Sakchai Lalit/AP).
Waving the red, white, and blue Thai flag during rally -- protests roar on as radical Red Shirts oppose conservative Yellow Shirts to change the system and clean up government (AP)
 
Monks protest as in the Saffron Revolution (R)
There has been a war on the streets of Bangkok for years as radical revolutionary Red Shirts agitate against political corruption in Theravada Buddhist Thailand. 

Even the monks frequently join in to oppose the Yingluck Shinawatra administration and the previous corrupt administration of her billionaire business mogul brother Thaksin Shinawatra.

Police State successfully resisted by Thais (W)
He was deposed by protesters fighting police and paramilitary forces in the street and went into self-imposed exile to avoid legal reprisals.

He then installed his sister, buying her election to the prime ministership but, allegedly, still pulling the strings and wielding political and business influence from afar.

The battle to oust Thailand's PM: Why has the prime minister been ordered to step down today? Find out the background to the crisis in this 60-second video (BBC.co.uk, May 7, 2014).

  
"Patriotic," conservative Yellow Shirts have been pro-corrupt government. The beloved king has allowed the matter to be resolved by the courts that today handed a victory to the Red Shirts by throwing her out of office. 

Red Shirts disrupt Thailand (BBC)
What does the court's decision mean?

It would be like the Occupy Movement waking up one day and realizing the third Bush/Cheney Administration (called the Obama Administration with a much more attractive leader carrying out all the worst policies of the previous ugly rulers) had been thrown out of office by the Supreme Court and hope for actual change had been restored.

The finance minister has been installed as the interim prime minister by the court. Deposed PM Yingluck Shinawatra is shocked and sad.

Bangkok is a booming Asian economy wracked by corruption in a city (Gift-of-Light/flickr)
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Live from the scene
Wisdom Quarterly reader Dr. Will writes in to say, "Whoever wrote this error-ridden story should be taken out and shot." Thank you, professor. We await your corrections and field report live from the scene. The story contains  links to the BBC version of events. So even though "[we and readers] can find out the facts about the current crisis in Thailand in a couple of minutes of googling," we hope you can do the Buddhist world one better than that and enlighten us all on what has truly happened in Bangkok. Send in your report because we don't want to waltz over to Thammasat U. to pick it up from you. "Jeez, guys!" He who admonishes, ack. But he who enlightens, ahh! Sawadee ka.

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