Perhaps the most surprising of the well-behaved, patient and good-humoured queues in the red shirt encampment has been the one for registration as members of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship. It may have been under canvas at the roadside, but the technology was as good as you will get in the more progressive government offices. Application forms were registered by computer and photo ID cards (proudly worn by everyone I talked to) were produced on the spot on payment of a 50 baht membership fee. A truly impressive level of organization.

For what purpose?

Well, it was your passport to the meal lines and so on and I assume it is the basis for claims that there are, for example, 400,000 members in Udon Thani province alone.

But the UDD is supposed to be a political movement. A democratic political movement. Does membership confer anything more than a set of privileges – the kind of thing you would expect from a fitness club? A membership card clearly gives the red shirts a sense of belonging. But does it also give them a sense of ownership?

When the People’s Alliance for Democracy was on the rampage, many, including myself, mocked their democratic pretensions. It is instructive to apply the same yardstick to the UDD.

The PAD were derided for being anti-democratic on two counts. One was for their internal organization. The decision to occupy the airports, for example, the crowning glory of their criminality, was communicated to the yellow masses by mobile phone calls on the morning of the off. Decisions, whether policy, strategy or tactics, were made behind the stage by a cabal of self-appointed (male) leaders and the rank-and-file just did what they were told.

Sound familiar?

The other reason why the D of the PAD was questioned had to do with their political agenda. This included their clever idea of combating vote-buying by removing the importance of voting. Parliament would be 30% elected (by those venal, ignorant upcountry buffaloes as well as right-thinking, yellow-shirted, educated folk) and 70% appointed. (They later said the exact percentages could be negotiated.)

So what policies do the UDD have that demonstrate the commitment to democracy that their name implies?

Well, it is a movement and not a political party, so perhaps we should not be too harsh at the lack of a comprehensive political agenda. But once questions about their motives move beyond the ubiquitous ‘yup sapha’ answers, we enter an unnerving void.

The previous organizational achievement of the red shirts was the rally in August last year to parade a petition with a claimed 5 million signatures to the gates of the Grand Palace, asking for an amnesty for former PM Thaksin. Like many other landmark events in the current polarization, this petition seems to have disappeared into a black hole. Certainly the vox pop in the tents at Rajprasong repeats that their struggle has ‘gone beyond’ Thaksin.

But gone beyond to what? Dissolution of parliament just means a new ballot, where, in theory at least, citizens choose their representatives based on the policy manifestoes presented by their parties. The reds have articulated a genuine set of ‘double standard’ grievances which even Abhisit’s roadmap acknowledges. Too many people in this country have been cheated, bullied and sneered at for too long. So what ideas have they got for doing something about it?

And this is where you start worrying.

Crop prices are a worry of theirs. Solution: Thaksin will keep prices high. Rural debt is pinching. Solution: Thaksin will, out of his own pocket, pay off the money-lenders. Ya ba abuse is back at the levels before Thaksin’s war on drugs. Solution: Thaksin will again let loose the forces of lawlessness and disorder and leave a few thousand more corpses littering the landscape.

This is pie in the sky white knight on a charger with a touch of the tooth fairy stuff. Where is the analysis? Where are the alternatives? Where are the plans for a single standard society?

Don’t go to Rajprasong looking for them.

About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).