What Went Wrong?
The Nation online
What went wrong? Probably, nothing was right from the very beginning.
Arisman Pongruangrong and other red-shirt leaders on a wanted list could not be apprehended when they were in full public view in the middle of the city, so what convinced Thai police that they could catch them by storming a hotel that once belonged to Thaksin Shinawatra?
From the embarrassing shambles left in their wake, not only did the police think they could do so – they must have presumed they could do it with one eye closed. When overweight Arisman, who must also be afraid of heights, staged a clumsy cable-descending stunt in front of local and international media from the SC Park Hotel’s third-floor balcony to safety, the humiliation of Thailand’s highly questionable police force was complete.
Not to mention that two senior officers were taken by the red mob from the hotel to the Rajprasong rally site to “guarantee” the escapees’ safe return. How come what was supposed to be a pre-dawn sting operation ended with Arisman staging the escape just before 10am and mobs accompanying all the police targets back to Rajprasong at noon?
Everything was so fishy that Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, who around 9am had proudly announced that Arisman and at least a couple of others were now in police custody, lost his cool and virtually everyone on the government side lost patience with his excuses. A probe into what went wrong was pledged, but the damage had been done and half the world was already laughing.
The operation reportedly started at 3am, with stake-out forces stationing themselves near the hotel’s entrances and exits, with a few disguising themselves as guests. Problem was, nobody knew for sure which rooms the targets – Arisman, Suporn Attawong, Payap Panket and Jeng Dokjik – were staying in. The four reportedly arrived at the hotel at around 4am.
Then around 6am another group of officers, purportedly working for an assistant police chief, arrived. One of them then committed a grave blunder by asking the hotel reception for house keys that could open all suspicious rooms.
That apparently did it. Phone calls must have been made by certain staff members and within minutes red shirts living nearby were gathering at the hotel. By the time the two groups of officers became aware of each other’s presence, the hotel was crawling with red shirts. Two pickups mounted with loudspeakers were used to block the road in front of the hotel, situated in the sprawling Town in Town estate off the Pradit Manutham (Ekkamai-Ram-Indra) Road.
The police called their superiors and requested commando reinforcements. Through all these hectic developments, the hotel staff managed to buy time and kept the house keys away from the now restless, and pretty much clueless, officers.
When the policemen finally got hold of the keys, Arisman was already playing a Mission Impossible hero, albeit with some difficulty due to his weight. His face was white and he appeared disoriented once he dropped himself to safety, into numerous red hands waiting to grab him on the ground.
“The police wanted to kill me,” he told reporters. “They wanted to kill me. There were bombs in the room.” Press photos of the room later showed what looked like grenades, which police said needed to be examined before they could ascertain the types.
According to Arisman, he did not escape from his own room, but from a “red guards” room where he had hidden after being alerted that the police were coming.
Details were sketchier as to how the other three red leaders escaped from the hotel. Reports said they were helped by red-shirt members, who easily outnumbered police officers and led the leaders out of their rooms without police resistance.
The SC Park Hotel incident has inflamed gossip about “tomato” police, the term for pro-red police who allegedly might have dragged their feet when it comes to legal action or operations against the protesters. Whether yesterday’s operations were simply lousy and ill conceived, or whether there had been moles within the force, reporters were able to locate one immigration officer, who described himself as a “brother” of Arisman.
The officer said he went to the hotel after hearing a distress call from Arisman’s mother and sister. The policeman said he was there only to make sure Arisman was not harmed after escaping from the hotel balcony.
Tags: Bangkok, Thailand
Zoe
Leave a Reply