Thai army chief rules out intervention (bad news for any governing elite when this happens)

[pampango]

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra leaves Bangkok for unknown destination, as political unrest claims another life.



The political unrest sweeping Thailand looks set to continue, with Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra leaving Bangkok and the army chief ruling out military intervention to stop the violence. Shinawatra's office said on Monday that the prime minister was about 150km from the capital. She has not been seen in public in Bangkok since last Tuesday, Reuters news agency reported.

In a televised address, army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha said: "Somebody has to take responsibility but that doesn't mean soldiers can intervene without working under the framework (of the law). How can we be sure that if we use soldiers, the situation will return to peace?"

Meanwhile the death toll from a blast on Sunday rose to three, after a six-year old girl died from injuries sustained during a grenade attack in a busy Bangkok shopping district, hours after Yingluck's supporters promised to get tough with demonstrators paralysing parts of the city. The explosion went off near one of the few large protest sites remaining, leaving a trail of blood and sandals on the streets near the Central World shopping mall.

Two siblings and a 40-year-old woman were killed in the attack, while three other suffered serious head injuries, Erawan Medical Center, which monitors Bangkok hospitals, said. In an earlier attack on Saturday, unidentified gunmen shot at an anti-government protest and threw explosive devices in the Khao Saming district of the eastern province of Trat, killing a five-year-old girl and wounding 41 people. Al Jazeera's Veronica Pedrosa, reporting from Bangkok, said officials think the blast was caused by a grenade shot from a M79 grenade launcher.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/02/thai-army-chief-rules-out-intervention-20142246282235291.html

When an army will not intervene in domestic politics to suppress sustained massive protests against a government, it is bad news for the incumbent. Mubarak, Ben Ali and Yanukovych all found out that an army and security force that won't fire on protesters (and won't keep firing on them until they disperse) are bad for their political longevity. (Ben Ali and, perhaps, Yanukovych got out while the getting was good.)