RARELY IN recent times has a movement earned the description "reactionary" with such justification as the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) leading the current street campaign to oust Thailand's government. It wants to return the country to a 1980s-style regime in which the rural population was considered too uneducated to vote and government was based on the royal family, the army and Bangkok's prosperous middle class from which the movement is predominantly drawn.
Its latest effort to displace the government led by prime minister Somchai Wongsonat has closed the capital's airport and threatens widespread violence. This strategy is designed to provoke an army coup and royal intervention which would force Mr Somchai out of office. The alliance regards him as an unacceptable proxy for the billionaire populist Thaksin Shinawatra, who ruled Thailand from 2001, was re-elected in a landslide in 2005 and then deposed by a military coup the following year. His party base is overwhelmingly in the poorer rural parts of northern Thailand to which he responded with a radical welfare and health programme. His record ensured victory for Mr Somchai, his son-in-law, in last year's elections, leading to the current political impasse.
Despite the many allegations of corruption, authoritarianism, demagogy and tax evasion levelled against Mr Thaksin, and his continuing influence on Mr Somchai from his exile in London, his party still enjoys majority support. Even if all these charges are accurate they do not invalidate the democratic process which brought it to power. The street movement against the government is narrowly based and highly elitist and there are growing signs that its thuggish tactics are alienating supporters. But it hopes to provoke the army and the monarchy into action. Mr Somchai has rejected army chief of staff Gen Anupong Paochinde's call for fresh elections and quite legitimately demands the airport be cleared of protesters at this busiest season for tourism.
This impasse cannot go on much more without being resolved one way or another. Thailand, like other Asian states, is making a long transition towards representative and competitive democracy based on universal suffrage. The PAD rejects that objective on narrow class and cultural grounds and hopes to force the army to back its actions. That has happened many times before. But on this occasion any such action would be counter-productive, provoking even more direct action in response. Mr Somchai deserves support in this crisis.