BANGKOK, Oct 31 (IPS) - With military takeovers enjoying a certain popularity, Thailand could easily be called ‘’the land of coups’’. But anti-coup sentiments, now building up, may work to thwart the country’s 19th putsch since becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

An anti-coup rally to be held on Saturday in an outdoor sports stadium in eastern Bangkok is being billed as a testing ground for this new trend, support for which comes mainly from the country’s rural heartland. 

Organisers of the Nov. 1 rally, including the United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), are excitedly talking of attracting close to 60,000 supporters for the event. 

Expectations for the success of the event are being shaped by the successful rally organised by the UDD and its media partner, a popular television programme called ‘Truth Today’, held on Oct. 11 at an indoor stadium north of the Thai capital. Some 10,000 people, dressed in red shirts, packed the stadium to hear speakers talk about the threats to democracy and elected governments. 

The message offered a lifeline to the beleaguered six-party coalition that governs Thailand and whose functioning has been crippled by anti-government protests since May. The latter, rallied under the banner of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), is advocating a right-wing, conservative agenda. It seeks to roll back electoral democracy and welcomes military intervention to get rid of the current administration, elected at a December poll. 

The past week saw Thailand awash with rumours that another coup was imminent. On Oct. 26, the supreme commander of the armed forces, Gen. Songkitti Jakkabat, had to quash such speculation by telling the media that ‘’a coup would not be good for the country.’’ But the rumours have persisted. 

‘’The red-shirt rallies are the reaction to what has happened in the country, that an elected government has not been able to function,’’ says Jakrapob Penkair, a former minister in the current government and a speaker at these events. ‘’We see this rally as a form of political education to make people aware about what is wrong with a coup.’’ 

‘’We hope that Saturday’s rally will serve to awaken more people... that they cannot sit idle if there is another coup,’’ he added during an IPS interview. ‘’The success or failure of that rally will point to where Thailand is moving as a democracy.’’ 

Such rallies are breaking new ground in this country’s nascent democratic culture. Never before have the public openly demonstrated in rallies ahead of possible military moves to turf out an elected government. Nor have there been large rallies soon after a putsch to openly challenge the new junta in power. 

In September 2006, the last coup, troops and tanks were greeted with flowers and cheers from adoring supporters of the army in Bangkok. That takeover, led by Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin, was Thailand's 18th coup since the overthrow of monarchy. 

The country has come under military rule several times between 1947 and 1991, but power generally changed hands without any real violence taking place and it would take months for public responses to emerge. 

‘’I don’t think we have seen something like this before of mass rallies to warn the military against launching a coup,’’ says Chris Baker, a British academic who has authored many books on Thai politics and economics. ‘’The only voices we heard before were limited to human rights groups or a few NGOs [non-governmental organisations]. And that would often happen after the event.’’ 

What it reveals is ‘’a new commitment to electoral democracy. People are finding a need for more expression, to speak out, because there is a greater understanding now about what the vote means,’’ he told IPS. ‘’This is the result of the enormous expansion of electoral democracy in the country over the past decade, where the political system has been decentralised at the local levels.’’ 

Yet at the same time, Saturday’s rally, being held under the theme ‘No Coup’, will inevitably sharpen the political divide in Thailand if it succeeds in drawing the expected thousands from Bangkok and from areas in the country’s poverty belt, in the north-east. This division has taken on a rural versus urban divide since the 2006 coup, which forced from power the then elected government of prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. 

Thaksin, a billionaire telecom tycoon before taking to politics, was seen as the saviour of the rural poor during his five years in office for the raft of pro-poor policies he implemented. But the more well-heeled urban elite, who have rallied around the PAD, saw him as a corrupt leader who abused power. 

Thaksin fled to London in August to escape a rash of legal cases brought against him. In October, the Supreme Court ruled against him over a questionable land deal made during his first term in office. The two-year jail sentence made Thaksin the highest ranking former public official to end up being convicted. 

But such verdicts have not stopped the PAD from targeting the current government, led by the People’s Power Party (PPP), which is closely affiliated to Thaksin. Yet this hostility is proving to be counterproductive, with many voters beginning to identify the PPP as a more representative symbol of democracy than the PAD or the military.

It is a climate, in fact, that has even made it possible for Thaksin to make an ‘appearance’ at Saturday’s rally via a 20-minute speech recorded on video. Samak Sundaravej, who was the prime minister of the six-party coalition till resigning in September -- after a court indicted him for appearing on a cookery show -- is also billed as a speaker. 

‘’We need to show that there are many people who don’t want a coup. That they will protest before a coup, during a coup and after a coup,’’ says Chaturon Chaiseng, a cabinet minister in the Thaksin administration who is also on the list of speakers at the rally. ‘’It will make the justification for a coup more difficult.’’ 

‘’This is a new phenomenon to build a people’s movement,’’ he told a group of journalists on Thursday. ‘’All the speakers will have the same strategy: there will be no confrontation and the people will be asked to stick to peaceful means of protest.’’