Meanwhile on March 2nd, two contingents of villagers from the North
and Northeast, each around 2,000-strong and calling themselves
Khabuan E-tan (‘Column of Buggies’) and ‘Kharavan Khonjon Doenthao’
(‘Caravan of the Walking Poor’), had set off on their well-provisioned and
widely publicized journeys to Bangkok. They converged on the outskirts
of the capital two weeks later, and were enthusiastically greeted by the
caretaker pm in person. Moving on to Chatuchak Park, in the north of
the city, they joined forces with hired taxi and motorcycle drivers and
camped out in a self-styled Caravan of the Poor & Democracy-Loving
People Village. This counter-demonstration, by tens of thousands of poor
beneficiaries of Thaksin’s populist programmes, proclaimed three objectives:
to give moral support to the Prime Minister, to buttress democratic
rule via election, and to call for further government help in alleviating
the manifold problems of the poor.