Bloomberg yesterday: Pro-Thaksin Group Considers Bangkok Airport Protest:
Supporters of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are considering staging a protest at Bangkok’s international airport, the scene of a 2008 blockade that helped topple the government.
“We are working the pros and cons and we will finalize this in a meeting later” this week, Sean Boonpracong, a spokesman for the group, said by phone in Bangkok today. The protests “will not be like” those organized by an anti-Thaksin group that closed Bangkok’s airports for eight days and helped push the country into recession, he said.
“We will not disrupt, we will not seize, we will not be anywhere near” the terminal building at Suvarnabhumi airport, he said. “It could be at the entrance to the airport.”
The Bangkok Post today: Planned airport rally sparks alarm
Business leaders and analysts offered dire warnings yesterday about the economic impact if airport operations are once again held hostage to Thailand’s ongoing political soap opera.
Thai stocks fell 1.39% yesterday amid reports that red-shirted supporters of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra could rally at Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Spokesmen for the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, a group led by pro-Thaksin supporters, insist that the rally, tentatively planned for next week, would not disrupt airport operations or interfere with passengers.
But concern spread quickly that the rally could turn into a repeat of November and December 2008, when Suvarnabhumi Airport was closed for eight days by the yellow-shirted People’s Alliance for Democracy, which forced the resignation of the government led by the People Power Party, the successor to Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai.
And another story from today’s Bangkok Post: UDD prepares airport rally but no blockade
The anti-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship is planning to stage a rally on the main road leading to Suvarnabhumi airport next week.
One of the group’s core leaders, Natthawut Saikua, yesterday said the rally was intended to press for progress in the prosecution of the UDD’s political rivals, the People’s Alliance for Democracy, for its extended blockade of the airport in late 2008.
Mr Natthawut said the protest would be peaceful. The group would not lay siege to the terminal and they would not block off the airport’s entrances.
(Emphasis mine.)