Three anti-government demonstrations in February, which attracted thousands of largely middle-class Thais, offered glimpses of this hostile sentiment towards Southeast Asia's richest country - although to date there have been no reports of attacks against Singaporean nationals.

"Welcome to Thailand: The Second Branch of Singapore," read one of the less provocative banners held by the demonstrators at one public rally. During these rallies, all a speaker has to do is castigate Singapore as a nation trying to buy its way into Thailand and the crowds roar in agreement.

Singapore as the scapegoat has its antecedents in a deal, made public late January, between Shin Corp, a telecommunications conglomerate founded by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and Temasek, the investment arm of the Singapore government.

Shin Corp was sold to Temasek by the Shinawatra family, which ran the company after Thaksin shifted from being billionaire tycoon to running the government, in a deal which fetched family shareholders US$1.85 billion in cash. Typical of Thai stock market transactions, no taxes were paid on the transaction.

Almost immediately, a bout of Singapore-bashing began to manifest itself in sections of the Thai-language media. "Our country has become a colony of Singapore," wrote a columnist in the January 25 edition of Kom Chad Luek, one of Thailand's leading local language dailies.

There even was a hint of anti-Chinese racism in the editorial. ''We should be aware of the danger from the black-haired and small-eyed foreigners. "We won't have anything left over the next few years because those black-haired and small-eyed foreigners came to be involved in every single policy in Thailand."

The warning that rising hostility against Thaksin could also be directed towards Singapore manifested itself in February during protests by a group of activists in front of the Singapore Embassy in Bangkok, calling on Temasek to cancel the deal.

Thailand's English-language newspapers have drawn attention to "xenophobia" and the "anti-foreigner" sentiment in articles reflecting the mood of a city angry at the Shinawatra family. Shin Corp owned key sectors of Thailand's economy, most notably telecommunications, which critics have indicated should remain in Thai hands for national security reasons. This week, the leader of Thailand's opposition Democrat Party, Abhisit Vejjajiva, told journalists at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand that there were important national security issues that raised concerns about the deal. He added, though, that "most Thais do not want us, as a nation, to slip into that kind of nationalism".

"If Temasek cooperates [in making known the conditions of the Shin Corp sale], I don't see why there would be a reason for resentment to be directed at Singaporeans," he said. So far, though, Temasek has withheld details about the US$1.85 billion deal.

The Shin Corp deal is only one of the many issues that have angered the government's critics, which have recently found expression through a series of massive rallies. The Thaksin administration is also being charged with corruption and financial irregularities, intimidating the media and undermining independent institutions set up to check the power of the government.

A grouping of anti-Thaksin people have formed the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) , which on Sunday called for a large-scale display of civil disobedience in the campaign to unseat the premier. They have set up camp in a park near Government House, which will be the target of ongoing rallies and demonstrations.

Anti-Thaksin campaign leader Sondhi Limthongkul said the protesters would not budge until Thaksin resigned. Thaksin has called elections for April, two years ahead of schedule, but the opposition parties have decided to boycott them.

The PAD, which organized a massive rally on Sunday, has stopped short of endorsing or opposing a petition for a royally-appointed prime minister, lodged by people related to the royal family, senators, academics and other prominent figures.

Tied to Singapore

Singapore is currently Thailand's second-largest investor after Japan. In 2004, its investments were estimated at $600 million. The portfolio includes banks, blue-chip property development and shares in the hospital and hotel sectors - many purchased in the wake of Thailand's 1997 financial collapse. The largest stockbroker in Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission is a Singaporean entity, Kim Eng Securities.

Foreigner-bashing is not new to Thailand. In the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, there was plenty of anti-foreigner finger-pointing by the Thai middle class that lasted up to 1999, when the Thai economy started to recover.

Foreigners - largely Westerners - were faulted for creating the conditions that led to the Thai economy's collapse, including Western currency traders and hedge funds speculating against the Thai baht.

In the early 1970s, the target was the Japanese. In the vanguard were university students enraged at Thailand's trade deficit with Japan and the latter's dominance of the local economy. The students called for a boycott of Japanese goods, a Japanese-owned gym was attacked and, most dramatically, hundreds of students surrounded the hotel where the then Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka was staying, and chanted anti-Japanese slogans. Today Japan is the largest investor in Thailand, with over 1,100 different Japanese companies operating here. Ironically, Thaksin earlier leveraged that anti-foreign sentiment to his political advantage when he set up his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party in 1998 and rode a nationalistic wave to electoral victory in January 2001, the beginning of his first term in office.

On taking office, Thaksin implemented new limits on the number of foreign consultants state entities were allowed to hire and revised the terms of engagement with Japanese contractors working on the new airport that required 80% of the building materials they used be sourced in Thailand.

"Thaksin is now at the receiving end of this Thai nationalist streak after selling Shin Corp," said David Streckfuss, a US academic specializing in Thai political culture. "The Singaporeans are the unfortunate targets of this feeling that foreigners cannot protect and represent the interest of Thais."

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