Co-founder of Book Re:public Pinkaew Laungaramsri speaks during an interview at the store in Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand.

DPA/Chiang Mai, Thailand

Book Re:public, a store specialising in literature on contemporary Thai politics and social issues, was inspired by Bangkok’s bloody street battles of April-May 2010.

“After the April-May events, we thought it would be good to have a place where people could come and discuss politics,” said Rodjaraeng Wattanapanit, one of the co-founders of the bookstore, which opened in Chiang Mai in October 2011 and whose name is a punctuation pun, meaning books regarding the public.

Rodjaraeng said she was shocked by the government’s use of force against the thousands of demonstrators wearing the Red Shirts that gave the movement its informal name, which left 92 people dead from April 10 to May 19, 2010.

Besides selling books and holding seminars once a week, his store offers a place for college students and young intellectuals to discuss the kind of democracy they want for their country.

Rodjaraeng, a former social worker, said she agrees with some of the Red Shirts’ motives, but denies being a member of the group.

“In Thailand today if you mention the word ‘democracy’, you are lumped in the Red Shirt camp,” she said.

The movement was started in June 2007, under the formal name of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) by a handful of political activists with close links to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted by a coup the previous year.

“I remember when the UDD got together to announce their platform,” said Chaiyan Ratchakul, dean of political science at Ubon Ratchathani University. “There were more speakers than people in the audience.”

But the group grew into the largest popular movement ever seen in Thailand, and mobilised tens of thousands of protesters for 69 days in Bangkok in 2010.

Chairman Thida Tavornset estimated the number of the movement’s followers at close to 10mn, mostly in rural areas.

Chaiyan sees the Red Shirt phenomenon as the result of decades of pent-up frustration in the provinces with a Bangkok-centric bureaucracy and parliamentary politics.

Thaksin, famed for his populist policies aimed at winning rural votes, changed the equation, he said.

“In the past, mass politics was usually opposed to parliamentary politics, but after Thaksin these two converged,” Chaiyan said.

“So parliamentary politics and mass politics are now the same, for the first time in Thai history.”

The Red Shirts’ protests in Bangkok aimed at forcing then prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament and bring back a pro-Thaksin government.

Abhisit agreed to hold a new election following the first day of the crackdown that left 25 dead, but the Red Shirt leaders rejected his terms. More bloodshed followed until the protest was crushed more than a month later.

The July 2011 general election brought the pro-Red Shirt Pheu Thai party to power, led by Thaksin’s sister Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

But there are other items on the Red Shirt agenda.

“My main objective is to get a new constitution that guarantees real democracy,” said Sriwan Chunpong, a Red Shirt leader in Chiang Mai.

The current charter, drafted by a military-appointed committee in 2007, is broadly seen as curtailing party politics.

Red Shirt leaders have said they want a political system based on elections more independent of the current influence of the military and the political elite.

“I think the institution should not interfere with politics, should not be involved in commerce and needs to reform,” Sriwan said.

Such open talk about the constitutional monarchy was unheard of 10 years ago, not only among the people but also from academics, often at the forefront of political debate in other countries.

The reticence was partly due to the strict lese-majesty law, which stipulate a 15-year jail sentence for defaming the king, queen or heir apparent, and partly due to ambivalence among academics about Thaksin and the 2006 coup that overthrew him.

“The situation was dubbed the ‘two don’t wants,’ - don’t want Thaksin and don’t want the military,” said Pinkaew Laungaramsri, assistant anthropology professor at Chiang Mai University, and also a co-founder of Book Re:public.

But the 2010 violence was a turning point for many academics, who have become more vocal, Pinkaew said.

Some academics and non-governmental organisations in Chiang Mai, the Red Shirt stronghold of northern Thailand as it is Thaksin’s home town, have now started to listen to the Red Shirts’ broader political message on the need for change, Pinkaew said.

“Before, college students went to the villages to teach them about democracy, but now the villagers are teaching college students,” Pinkaew said.