Ex-PAD member’s plan to unite yellows, reds against govt can be laughed away The “unthinkable” had become “implausible” lately and on Friday it was upgraded to just “unlikely”. Chaiwat Sinsuwong, a key member of a splinter group of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), still has some way to go before his ambition to get the yellow shirts to join hands with the red shirts to oust the Abhisit Vejjajiva government can really become something the ruling Democrats will fear. The proposed merger, as of now, remains something to be sneered at.

There are a few reasons why Chaiwat’s idea will stop at “unlikely”. First, Chaiwat does not represent the mainstream yellow shirted movement and then he has not even been on good terms with the PAD leaders. Moreover, the PAD joining the red shirts is like you joining your sworn enemy, someone you had pledged to die fighting against. As for the red shirts, joining the yellow shirts would be tantamount to spitting on your own ideology.

But this is Thai politics, where ideology can be thrown to the winds. To the yellow shirts, Abhisit seems a “bigger enemy” than the red shirts, who have had the prime minister as their arch-rival since his rise to power. That means the two camps might decide that they should join hands to tackle him first and take care of each other later. The question, however, remains how far each camp is prepared to go in betraying its own belief in order to put Thaksin away.

The Nation