The Nation reports here that yesterday while driving to work Sondhi's truck was sprayed by assault rifle fire in an apparent assassination attempt. Sondhi is a leader of the Yellowshirt group that opposes Thaksin, the Redshirts, and is largely responsible for the current government coming to power.
There are a lot of different suspects in the attempt at this point including disgruntled civilians, professional assassins, military personnel, and the police. What I want to figure out though is WHY the perpetrators tried to assassinate him. What did they hope to get from this action? The way I see it there are a few different possibilities:
1) Simple revenge – With the Redshirt demonstrations having been dispersed there is the possibility that a Redshirt or Redshirt sympathizer could have simply wanted to strike out at their enemies as a way to get even. I doubt this motive, however, because if Sondhi was killed the act would probably strengthen and not weaken the Yellowshirts. Generally when a political figure is killed in this way he simply becomes a martyr and his supporters rally behind his ideology and become even more active. I would assume that at least some of the Redshirt leaders know this and would prevent an assassination attempt if the motive was simply revenge.
2) They wanted this to be the opening shot in a new underground phase of this conflict – Some of the Redshirt leaders have said that they will initiate a new phase in the conflict with the Redshirts going underground. Assassinating Sondhi could have been seen as a good way to open this stage in the conflict as it would show that the Redshirts still have power and it would give them a ton of press. This doesn't sound too plausible either though. If this was meant as a way to open this new phase of the conflict it would, in effect, be advertising how much power the Redshirts have lost over the last few days. A few days ago they were calling for all of the people to rise up in open rebellion and now they are simply hiding in the shadows assassinating people. Not quite the message you want to send to the public if you want to gain supporters.
3) Instigate the Yellowshirts to become active again – This seems to me to be the most plausible explanation for the attack. The Redshirts lost a lot of support with all of the chaos and damage their protests caused. Now that they are down (but definitely not out) getting the Yellowshirts to stage some large scale protests would be a great way to make the Yellowshirts the bad guys again in the international media and amongst the great majority of Thais who are simply tired of all this protesting.
4) Prevent Abhisit from offering amnesty towards Redshirt leaders – It could be that this was carried out by a personal enemy within the Yellowshirt coalition. It is plausible that one of the more extreme members of the Yellowshirts hatched this plot simply as a way of getting rid of a rival within the Yellowshirt organization and at the same time ensuring that Abhisit's options in dealing with protest leaders are more limited. The Bangkok Post has already reported that Abhisit is open to amnesty. Assassinating Sondhi would be a good way of ensuring that this did not happen and could well force the PM to take a harder line against the Redshirt leaders.
Anyone out there have any other possible motives?
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