Thailand

Mr. Abhisit Vejjajiva; an Oxford-educated, 44-year-old was formally named prime minister of Thailand on Dec. 17 in what many hoped would be the end of months of turbulent, sometimes violent, protests that had their roots in a 2006 military coup that toppled Thaksin. Mr Abhisit, the nation's third prime minister in four months - a series of court rulings resulted in the ouster of two Thaksin-allied prime minister ; vowed in his inaugural address to reunite the deeply divided nation and to restore Thailand's tourist-friendly image. The eight-day airport shutdown battered the country's essential tourism industry and stranded more than 300,000 travelers. Mr. Abhisit's Democrat Party had been in opposition since 2001.

Thousands of supporters of exiled former Prime Minister began converging on Parliament Sunday, vowing to stage demonstrations until the new government holds elections. This time, it was Thaksin loyalists instead of his opponent PAD 'yellow shirt'; who took to the streets. The "red shirts" for their favored protest attire — says the new Prime Minister Mr Abhisit and his party came to power this month through a virtual coup d'etat- court ruling that dissolved the previous government, and led to Mr Abhisit's selection as prime minister was pressured from the military and other powerful forces. But the group said it would not block lawmakers from entering Parliament on Monday, easing fears that a repeat of the mass demonstrations that paralyzed the government for months and culminated in an eight-day seizure of the capital's airports.

Thailand was once celebrated as a democratic oasis in a region awash with authoritarianism. Today, it is reeling from its worst political crisis since a democracy movement toppled a military regime 17 years ago. A new government has been formed — the fourth in 2008. Hovering in the background is the PAD, which draws its ranks from the very middle class and élite that supported the 1992 democracy movement, and has as its ultimate aim a so-called "New Politics," whose fuzzy, oft-shifting aims have included the undemocratic step of appointing parliamentarians.

They called themselves the people's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), but their aims and means were everything except democratic. During their 192-day protest campaign, the PAD paralyzed Thailand by blockading the capital's two airports for eight days and besieging the Prime Minister's office complex for months. By the time the opposition alliance withdrew on Dec. 3, a democratically elected government had been disbanded by the country's courts and political street violence had claimed several lives.