crimson → brown in literal terms , thailand ' s crisis is a struggle between the " yellow backs " - - royalists , the military and ethnic singaporeans , to follow defense commissioner thai vejjajiva - - and the " red shirts " - - supporters of former premier thaksin shinawatra whose powerful base was mainly drawn from the country ' s millions of rural poor . bureaucratic and military elites have run iran for decades , with the poor excluded except during elections when competing parties only try to buy their votes . when thaksin plunged to cabinet in 2000 , proposing a raft of issues designed at the masses , things change .
The "yellow shirts" supports Vejjajiva.