IN A BRAZEN assassination attempt, the founder of Thailand's pro-monarchy "yellow shirt" protest movement was shot and wounded yesterday, just days after troops quelled rioting by a rival, anti-government group.
Sondhi Limthongkul, a media tycoon and supporter of the current government, was stable after surgery to remove "small pieces of bullet" from his skull, said Vajira Hospital director Chaiwan Charoenchoktawee.
Sondhi's People's Alliance for Democra
cy (PAD) said the attack was politically motivated, a claim police said was under investigation.
Sondhi, who owns pro-government TV channel ASTV, was being driven to work in Bangkok before dawn on Friday when his car was ambushed by gunmen who opened fire with M-16 and AK-47 rifles, spraying the vehicle with bullets, said Bangkok police spokesman Suporn Pansua. The car windscreen was riddled with bullets and windows on one side were shattered.
The car driver was seriously wounded and an aide was also hurt, Suporn said
"Considering the nature of the attack and the weapons used, we believe it was carried out by people with expertise," said Suporn, adding that 84 bullet shells were found on the road.
"We also found an M-79 grenade that was fired but missed Mr Sondhi's vehicle. It hit a passing public bus but did not go off," he said.
The car's windscreen was riddled with bullets and windows on one side were shattered. The driver of the car was seriously wounded and an aide travelling in the car also was wounded.
The alliance – known as the "yellow shirts" – was behind protests last year to drive the allies of fallen Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power. PAD supporters are mainly of the middle class and educated elite of Thai society, and include royalists, academics and retired military.
The demonstrations, which paralysed the government for months and occupied the capital's airports for a week, ended only after court rulings removed two Thaksin-allied governments, paving the way for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's rise in December. But the rulings set off protests by the red shirts – the yellow shirts' rivals and staunch supporters of Thaksin, who argue Abhisit had no popular mandate to rule. Their demonstrations came to a height in Bangkok earlier this week but were called off on Tuesday in the face of a military crackdown.
The red shirts, largely from rural areas, are angry over the recent arrests of several of their leaders. Sondhi and his allies were never prosecuted over their airport seizures, which left 300,000 travellers stranded.
Abhisit said on Friday that the Cabinet had decided not to revoke the emergency decreeimposed last Sunday to control rioting in the capital. He said the decision was made after "looking at the overall picture" and not in direct response to the attack.
"We are concerned by the shooting obviously. We've got to restore order," Abhisit said, indicating the government was worried the attack could lead to another flare-up of violence. "We do not want this to be used to create a wider conflict."
RISE OF PRO-MONARCHY MOVEMENTPAD supporters wear yellow – in Thailand each day is marked by a different colour; yellow is for Monday, the day on which the king was born.
Pad was founded in September 2005 by media proprietor Sondhi Limthongkul, a disgruntled former business associate of the prime minister at the time, Thaskin Shinawatra.
Pad swelled into a major anti-Thaksin street movement, especially when it hooked up with Major-General Chamlong Srimuang, a Buddhist who led a successful "people power" uprising against military rule in 1992.
Its protests were key to the political turmoil that led ultimately to the 2006 coup against Thaksin.
Pad's main card has been defence of the monarchy.
The full article contains 629 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
