In addition, the riots gave the government a potential pretext to clamp down on anti-government protests related to the 2003 elections. According to Ministry of Interior
officials, police began to be ‘equipped with smoke grenades, electro-shock batons, tear-gas canisters, Vietnamese-trained attack dogs, high pressure fire hoses, and other weapons to ensure that the “bitter lesson” learned at the Thai Embassy does not happen again’. Such steps were clearly in the CPP’s interest with a close election expected in 2003, and the anti-CPP ‘Democracy Square’ demonstrations – in which dozens of protesters, including monks, were killed or injured during a police crackdown after the 1998 election – still fresh in everyone’s mind.22