It's over

The Red shirts have given up and gone home.

This morning the army showed up at the mob's last outpost, outside Government House, the prime minister's headquarters, with enough troops to conquer France and an arsenal just short of nuclear weapons. Also, the army had cut off the 5,000 remaining protestors' sticky-rice supply. So that was that.

In its polite Thai way, the government sent in 60 buses to transport the rioters to bus stations around the city so they could go home for the Songkran holiday. Most of them were from up north.

Prime Minister Abhisit comes out of this looking not too bad. After the ASEAN summit debacle, he looked hopeless. But last week he promised he would return the country to normal in four days, and he pretty much did. He struck a good balance between life-saving restraint and enough force to retake the city from the mobs.

What's next is going to be tricky. Abhisit has to lure tourists and investors back, and he has to placate the red shirts' large mainly rural constituency. The mob's leaders are being arrested, but what to do with them? When the yellow shirts---allies of Abhisit---shut down the airport last year, the leaders of that ruinous mayhem were arrested but quickly bailed out, and prosecutions have been slow to nonexistent. So more evenhandedness is now required, and that will be politically treacherous.

Today one of the housekeeping ladies at the hotel said to me glumly, "Songkran mai sanuk." New Year's is no fun. Then one of the other staff made some crack in Thai that I didn't get, and the maid guffawed happily. Civil war? Mai pen rai. Joe and I leave Thailand a week from today, and I will miss it.