Thailand Braces for Political Rallies in Capital

BANGKOK — Thailand’s seemingly unending political crisis is likely to reach another moment of tension this weekend with huge opposition rallies that organizers say they hope will paralyze the city and bring down the government.

While pledging nonviolence, protest leaders say they will gather hundreds of thousands of mostly rural supporters for mass rallies and blockades of government offices, starting on Friday and building over the following days.

Thousands of buses, trucks and farm vehicles are expected to converge from neighboring provinces in what one organizer called Maoist tactics of “the forest surrounding the town.”

The government, warning of violence, has invoked the Internal Security Act, which effectively hands control over to the military, with the right to impose curfews, set up checkpoints and restrict the movements of demonstrators.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva warned last week of unspecified acts of “sabotage.” This week he canceled a planned visit to Australia because of the urgency of the situation.

The weekend plans are the latest pressure points that have wearied many Thais over the past four years. Thailand has become “a nation cursed to live in a constant state of anxiety,” said the daily newspaper The Nation.

The image of a rural invasion of the capital emphasizes the complex and deepening divisions in the country, which in their simplest terms pit the rural poor against an urban establishment whose primacy is under threat.

Thailand’s rural underclass found an electoral voice under former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and has rallied to his defense since he was ousted in a coup in 2006. He now lives abroad, evading a two-year prison term on a conviction for corruption.

“Our aim is to topple the government, force them to make a choice between suppressing us and stepping down,” a protest leader, Jaran Ditsatapichai, said last week.

It is not the first time that one side or another in alternating street campaigns — known by their clothing as the red shirts and the yellow shirts — has announced that goal as governing power changes hands. This time it is the turn of the red shirts.

“We’ve heard that many times before,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an expert on Thailand at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “Every time, they say it’s going to be the final showdown. Do they really believe that a final showdown will put Abhisit out of power?”

More unsettling, he said, is the possibility that other groups with other agendas might instigate violence.

“If it turns nasty it might not be because of the reds,” he said. “Right now there are so many factions all over the place. Even within the reds and the yellows, so many factions. We don’t know who is allied to who. The whole situation creates a context in which a third, fourth, fifth hand can take advantage.”

The red shirts have been violent in the past, but some analysts say violence at this point would discredit them and strengthen the position of the government.

The planned demonstration is a continuation of tensions since early 2006 that have included blockades of government buildings, the occupation of Bangkok’s two airports, the disruption of a meeting of regional heads of state, two particularly violent rallies and a military coup.

A year ago, a demonstration by tens of thousands of red shirts touched off some of the worst violence in years, leaving two people dead and more than 120 injured.

The most recent moment of anxiety was just two weeks ago when the government warned of a violent reaction when the Supreme Court found Mr. Thaksin guilty of concealing his wealth and of abusing his office.

It confiscated $1.4 billion in frozen assets but allowed him to keep nearly $1 billion that he had earned as a telecommunications tycoon before taking office in 2001.

There was no violence, and this weekend’s rally is in part a deferred reaction to that verdict.

Analysts say that the ruling has opened the door to a new round of legal cases against Mr. Thaksin and that he is unlikely to see any of that money soon.

Using other money available to him outside Thailand, he is believed to be funding much of the red shirt activity and has rallied supporters from his refuge abroad, mostly in Dubai.

In a Twitter message earlier this week, in an increasingly familiar plaintive tone, he said, “I would like to urge those who love democracy, justice, equality, and those who think that I have been bullied without mercy and humanity, to join the rally.”

As his physical absence has lengthened, the red shirt movement has fragmented into sometimes hostile factions, and many insist that their movement is in support of democracy more than of Mr. Thaksin.

But the divisions often seem to have less to do with ideology than with a struggle for wealth and power.

Mr. Thaksin’s supporters among the rural and urban poor are in the majority, and their vote has helped win the last three general elections for parties that back him. Mr. Abhisit’s government took office through a parliamentary vote in December 2008 when a court disbanded the governing pro-Thaksin party for electoral fraud. If the red shirts can bring down the current government and force a new election, they reason, Mr. Thaksin’s side could step back into power.

Their opponents argue that Mr. Thaksin was corrupt, that he was destroying democratic institutions and that he has manipulated the poor majority with populist measures like cheap medical care and various forms of financial assistance.

The yellow shirts, who demonstrated against previous pro-Thaksin governments, have proposed a constitutional amendment that would put more electoral power into the hands of an educated elite while limiting the influence of the rural vote.

It was the yellow shirts who blockaded the prime minister’s office for months in 2008 and closed down Bangkok’s two airports for a week. Tourists fled the country, and in an effort to reassure them, the government announced a $10,000 insurance package for any who might be harmed by political violence.

Last week, with the new moment of uncertainty approaching, the government spokesman, Panitan Wattanayagorn, said the insurance offer was still good.