Bangkok: how did it come to this?

WHEN the red shirts came to Bangkok on 12 March many thought that their rally would disperse after a few days, or at least no more than a week or so. The crowd was impressive one of the biggest Bangkok had ever seen though its impact was diminished by over-confident predictions by red-shirt leaders that one million rural protesters would descend on the capital. After the debacle of April 2009, when the red invasion of the ASEAN summit in Pattaya degenerated into street confrontations and an ignominious withdrawal from Bangkok, many thought, or hoped, that the red shirts would be satisfied with a short, sharp show of numerical strength.