Tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Bangkok in a striking echo of previous protest movements that, over the last decade, have led to a military coup, the occupation of the main international airport, the court-ordered resignation of two prime ministers and a military operation in Bangkok in 2010 that cost more than 90 lives.
Those years of turmoil surrounding the figure of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra left Thailand shocked and exhausted in 2010.
For the past three years there has been little appetite for confrontation. Efforts by hard-line royalists to rally demonstrations against the government of Mr Thaksin's sister, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, went nowhere.