Newly appointed Thai Minister of Defense Air Chief Marshal Sukampon Suwannathat is quietly planning to activate a new "war room", or secretive unofficial command center, to direct mass pro-government "red-shirt" demonstrations planned for the coming months, according to senior Thai military sources familiar with the situation.
The war room, created at the direction of fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, will become operational by June, the same sources say. The senior military sources say that Thaksin, who lives in self-exile in the United Arab Emirates, ordered that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, his younger sister, be kept in the dark about the war room's creation so that she may honestly deny its existence if questioned by the press.
Whether the announced red-shirt demonstrations are planned to pre-emptively take control of Bangkok's streets ahead of a possible new crisis, or plotted as a defensive strategy to counter any move by the military or anti-government protest groups, the war room's creation signals the seriousness with which Thaksin views the potential for renewed open conflict.
Two issues that could stoke new bouts of instability are already at hand. The ruling Puea Thai party has commenced a process to gain parliamentary approval to draft a new constitution, a move widely perceived among Thaksin's critics as aimed at voiding his criminal conviction for corruption and its attendant two-year jail term, and his return to Thailand as a free man.
Full Story: Asia Times
Thought: Here we go again
