Introduction
This article is an empirical explanation on the development of political protest
movements and protest politics in Thailand since the rise of Thaksin Shinawatra
and the Thai Rak Thai Party in 2001 until the latest coup d’état in 2014. Because
the author intend to focus on the contestation and polarization between the two
protest movements, the red shirts and yellow shirts (and the anti-Thaksin groups),
therefore the article will pay more attention to the emergence and evolution of the
two Thai political protest factions. The aim of the article is to present factual
information on the circumstances that led to the extensive antagonism between the
red shirts and yellow shirts (as well as the anti-Thaksin groups). The article is
divided into four main parts: the rise and fall of the populist Thai Rak Thai Party
(2001-2006); the military junta, yellow shirts and street politics (2007-2008); the
red shirt uprising and the government’s crackdown (2009-2010); and the
resurrection of the Thaksin regime and the new face of protest movements (2011-2014). The
information in this article came from theauthor’s collection of daily news clippings and
memosor reflective notes ( Groenewald ,2008 ) between 2011 and 2014. The materialswere mostly retrieved from online media,forboth international and Thai contents.