This much alone is certain about the Bangkok bombing; it was clearly designed to kill and maim as many people as possible. At least 21 perished in the blast and more than 120 were injured, many of them critically. The question now is who instigated and committed this outrage. The terrorists may have chosen their target well in terms of impact, but they also took a major risk. The sheer popularity, with both tourists and locals, of the Erawan Hindu shrine at a major city intersection guaranteed that at any one moment, dozens of cameras would be pointed at it. Police already have CCTV footage which shows a young man approaching the shrine with a black backpack but leaving without it. The security forces are saying that the device was a pipe bomb, containing three kilos of explosive, which had been wrapped in white material. That they have got this far in their investigation so quickly is impressive. However, there has been some surprise that within hours of the crime on Monday night, the site was being washed down. Normally the forensic examination of a bombing scene takes at least a day, as fragments of the device could contain crucial evidence such as DNA or even fingerprints. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Almost immediately after the blast, some officials were briefing that it might well have been connected with the Muslim insurgency in the south of the country. Yet a spokesman for the ruling military junta later said that he doubted this was true, because the attack was uncharacteristic of the insurgents, who generally confine their activities to their own region. Nor have they ever targeted tourists. Suspicion therefore shifts to people within Thailand's viscerally divided politics. The prime candidates would be supporters of exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, whose sister Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted by the military in May 2014. Yingluck had led Shinawatra's Pheu Thai party to victory in the July 2011 general election. Then there is the fact that there have been bomb attacks before in Bangkok. Though it seems that everyone is intent on regarding the Erawan massacre as exceptional, it is in truth merely a case of degree. What is certain is that Thailand's military rulers will use this latest bombing as a reason both to clamp down on some politicians and also to delay the return to democratic politics. This will most affect the “Red Shirt” supporters of Shinawatra's Pheu Thai party. The rival “Yellow Shirts”, who call themselves the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), are drawn from a range of parties but are united in their opposition to the Shinawatras and in their support for the monarchy and the country's elite. Though some in the PAD deplore the suspension of democracy, the Yellow Shirts broadly welcomed last year's military coup, if only because it pushed the Pheu Thai party from power. Any extension of military rule would, therefore, be acceptable. If this was the work of a “crazy”, who considers himself a Shinawatra supporter, the Erawan carnage is the last thing that the party would want. Those who benefit most from the outrage are the PAD and the military. The speed with which the blast site was cleansed with the inevitable destruction of forensic evidence is, therefore, doubly unfortunate in that the criminals may never be found and that a cloud of suspicion will now hang over the Thai military.
