BANGKOK — For a man who has faced seemingly endless efforts to oust him by both parliamentary ballot and by bullet, by the slippery devious machinations that are meat and drink to Thai politicians and by street protesters who took over the commercial heart of Bangkok for more than two months, Prime Minister Abhisit seems remarkably relaxed.
Right on time he walks into the sparsely decorated sitting room of his parliamentary office in Bangkok, performs a wah greeting (with hands joined), shakes hands and sits down for a 30-minute interview that stretched to 50 minutes.
He admits that "I was in danger of losing my life" during the March to May street protests by Red Shirt supporters of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, which saw Abhisit flee from his besieged own home and office to a military barracks for protection "like a lamb among lions," as a Thai commentator put it.