We may be seeing the end game. The protests will only end when the radical leaders are captured, and that is the army's real objective.
I am (I think reliably) informed by thai contacts that the reason Veera resigned as leader was that, despite achieving the main political objective (a dissolution date), Thaksin ordered the occupation to be maintained, and negotiations to be terminated. He has apparently told his rotweilers that if the government wants to end the occupation, the negotiations must be directly with him. You can imagine the demands that would be made (starting with 49 billion baht.)
The reds may have geniune greivances, but they have been skillfully expolited by Thaksin, and the government is left with no option but to crush Taksin's last stand, and then proceed down the road-map with rational leaders, not Thaksin's rotweillers.
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