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Sondhi was taken to hospital, where doctors were operating to remove a bullet from his head. His driver was also critically wounded.
Sondhi’s program had been critical of various factions in Thailand, but remained pro-monarchy. His major political opponents include the pro-Thaksin Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship that broke up the ASEAN summit in Pattaya last weekend and staged four days of violent riots in Bangkok.
A lawyer for the PAD told Time magazine that he thought police or military members or supporters of the group, known as the Red Shirts, were behind the assassination attempt.
Thailand’s tragic Songkran New Year holiday this week saw only two independently confirmed deaths resulting from four days of Red Shirt-inspired political violence, although the group’s leadership cited dozens, so far without credible evidence. They claim that the military hid and disposed of bodies of demonstrators it had killed.
To cease what was viewed as intentionally misleading incitement, the Thai government shut down at least three independent community radio stations. One of them was based in Thaksin Shinawatra’s northern stronghold of Chiangmai, the anti-government Rak Chiang Mai 51 station.
Prior to that, the authorities had also cracked down on anti-government incitement on the DTV channel operated by the Red Shirts, and on Thursday actually raided the station over the protests of some 200 angry demonstrators outside the station.
Thailand’s most important issues used to be the Thai monarchy and the nation’s image. That was beginning to shift over the years with occasional “uprisings” over the lack of human rights and the absence of genuine free speech. Various incidents – including Thaksin’s 2003 anti-drug war, occasional government-directed and military-backed killings and kidnappings and the relentless pursuit of those deemed to have affronted the monarchy – tarnished Thailand’s image, but the tourist dollars kept flowing.
That was until the People’s Alliance for Democracy, or Yellow Shirts, closed down Bangkok’s two main airports last November and engineered a grassroots uprising that led to the resignations of two consecutive prime ministers of the People’s Power Party, widely considered a puppet party under Thaksin’s absentee leadership.
Added to this were the Red Shirt protests that managed to curtail the ASEAN summit in the resort city of Pattaya. These events have totally undermined the claims of unity that Thai authorities have been fond of advertising.
That Thai society is fragmented is clear – but who will be in charge of gluing the pieces back together is a large and contentious issue. The government has assigned the prestigious King Prajadhipok’s Institute to study, over the next several months, how the Thai political scene should be reformed to safeguard the monarchy and protect the rights of the Thai people.
That’s the official version. The unofficial version is that the institute has the confidence of only those seeking to maintain the relative status quo, with as little tweaking as possible. That there are contradictions between what the government says it will do and what it permits to be done is clear, and it’s a decades-old story in Thailand.
Police, military, the elite and powerful vested interests more or less share power and status in the country and don’t want their turf disturbed. So the eventual result of the institute’s study is hardly going to significantly embellish human rights or free speech in the kingdom.
Thailand has been experiencing a public insurrection. But in a less public sense another insurrection is taking place. Status quo advocates are pulling out all the stops to prevent free political reform from upsetting the system that has ruled the country for countless decades.
In 1932 a revolt against the palace was carried out, in part to curtail the overwhelming abuse of power by the monarchy as well as to place control of government in the hands of the military. This arrangement has held over into the 21st century.
Military interference in political affairs is even being imagined by conspiracy buffs in the latest murder attempt against Sondhi Limthongkul. However, more credible rumors are rife that police were involved, as they have been a continuous target of Sondhi's criticism.
Certainly if police were involved finding proof may be excruciatingly difficult. What is clear is that Thailand's political future will not be easy to prescribe because, metaphorically, many patients think the unlicensed doctor is a quack.
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com – he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)
