THE embattled Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, announced a state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding regions yesterday as anti-Government demonstrators tried to storm the Interior Ministry and police began arresting the protest leaders who shut down the weekend ASEAN summit.
Mr Abhisit, a relative novice, was humiliated by the summit's failure and has seen charges of gross incompetence levelled against him and the security forces who were supposed to protect the five-star hotel where the Association of South-East Asian Nations summit was being held in the beach resort of Pattaya.
``The Government has tried all along to avoid violence but the protest has developed and they [the protesters] have used actions incompatible with the constitution,'' Mr Abhisit said in a televised speech. ``Now the Government is unable to avoid this state of emergency''.
Stung by the widespread denouncement, Police yesterday arrested Arisman Pongreungrong, a former pop singer and the leader of the ``red shirts'', protesters formally known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship who are aligned with the deposed and exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mr Arisman would be charged with causing social unrest and attempting to kidnap Mr Abhisit, police said. The red shirts responded that they would march on police headquarters and demand their leader's release.
Mr Arisman's arrest was the first step in a campaign of ``legal actions'' flagged by Mr Abhisit late on Saturday night to restore law and order.
The Prime Minister has refused to resign.
``The Government may well clamp down and if they do clamp down, it could be very harsh,'' said Thitinan Pong dhsudhirak, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University. ``They are pent up. They lost face big time here.''
It took only minutes for several hundred protesters to breach the security cordon around the ASEAN summit on Saturday. Police and soldiers had been instructed not to use force to repel the red shirts. But it remains baffling how they were unable to secure a complex situated high on a hill and only accessible via one main road.
The security forces had been relying on locals in blue garb and wielding clubs and slingshots to deal with the red shirts. However, a clash between the two sides on Saturday enraged the protesters, who quickly marched to the summit venue, pushing back police lines before smashing through a glass door and pouring inside.
Before the summit, Mr Abhisit had repeatedly assured world leaders and the Thai people that the event would run smoothly. Analysts warned that any heavy-handed measures taken to disperse an emboldened red shirt movement that has since moved to Bangkok pose risks of further chaos.
Mr Abhisit is open to charges of hypocrisy, as he rose to power following protests by the ``yellow shirts'' activists from the People's Alliance for Democracy aligned to the country's business, military and public service elites who brought Bangkok to a standstill late last year. There have been no legal sanctions against the yellow shirts.
The red shirts are a formidable force able to mobilise large numbers of people in Bangkok and in Thailand's northern and north-eastern provinces, Professor Thitinan said.
As well as demanding that Mr Abhisit stand down, the red shirts want the country's privy council, the formal advisory body to the long-reigning monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, to be removed.
The privy council is supposedly neutral but its head, Prem Tinsulanonda, a retired general and former prime minister, has expressed support for Mr Abhisit and the red shirts see him as the mastermind behind the military coup in 2006 that overthrew Thaksin and forced him into exile.
Thaksin, a billionaire tycoon found guilty in absentia of corruption, addressed a red shirt rally in Bangkok via video link from the United Arab Emirates on Saturday. Local media quoted him yesterday as saying he regretted the violence that led to the ASEAN summit's cancellation.
The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was due to attend the summit but turned back in mid-air after it was cancelled.
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