Thailand's Broken Democracy (Part II)

Five grenades exploded in the heart of Bangkok’s business district on the evening of April 22, killing at least one person and wounding 75 as rival groups of protesters demonstrated and shouted insults at one another across a makeshift barricade.

It was the worst violence since April 10, when 25 people were killed in a clash between the military and the red shirts, and it raised fears that confrontations between rival groups of protesters could spread.

In recent years, Thailand has been hit by a military coup and mass demonstrations that all but paralyzed the government.

In April 2010 a battle of wills raged between the Thai government and tens of thousands of protesters barricaded in the streets of Bangkok. After six weeks of paralyzing demonstrations calling for the government's resignation and new elections, protestors widely known as the Red Shirts have brought the country to a point of crisis. A failed attempt to disperse the rallies on April 10 resulted in 24 deaths and hundreds of other injuries. Though that clash was the worst political violence in Thailand in nearly 20 years, it resolved nothing: The protesters held their ground and the government refused their demand to step aside.

Two days after repulsing the blood-soaked military crackdown, the protesters cheered jubilantly at the announcement that the country's election commission had recommended that the party of the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva be disbanded on charges of receiving an illegal donation.

The Red Shirts expanded their sit-in on April 15, turning Bangkok's central shopping area into a tent city and vowing to make it their "final battleground" in an effort to force Mr. Abhisit's government to resign and hold new elections.

Thailand has become "a nation cursed to live in a constant state of anxiety," according to the daily newspaper The Nation.

The protests in their broadest terms pit the rural and urban poor against the more affluent middle-class establishment of the capital as Thailand struggles to redefine its political balance of power.

The protests stem from a 2006 military coup that removed Thaksin Shinawatra, a tycoon turned prime minister, after which the political party he led and a successor party were dissolved by the courts. Thailand's rural underclass found an electoral voice in the former prime minister, and has rallied to his defense since his ouster. He now lives abroad, evading a two-year prison term on a conviction for corruption.