Then big business mounted furious opposition pitting the employed against the homeless and everyone else, scaring the local left-leaning establishment.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, thousands have been kidnapped and detained, mostly by forces loyal to Assad but also by the opposition pitted against him.
Mr Abhisit's Democrat Party is pitted against an opposition still effectively controlled by Mr Thaksin, our correspondent adds.
Naoto Kan, policy chief of the Democratic Party of Japan, the leading opposition group, said the election would pit the coalition in power against "an opposition which is very serious about structural reform".
The PAC had previously poured $20,000 into a hard-hitting opposition campaign, pitting the retired firefighter's budget spending priorities against feared impacts to public services.
It is now a civil war that has pitted his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, against an opposition drawn largely from the Sunni majority.
In April 1988 an opposition Popular Front emerged.
A running battle developed outside the headquarters of the chief opposition party, pitting its supporters against peacekeepers and Liberian security forces, who fired tear gas and live rounds.
In other words, polarizing tactics that divide the opposition party, pitting pro-gay-rights Democrats against anti-gay-rights Democrats, for example, may have contributed to Bush's diminished support from independent voters.
Syria is embroiled in a civil war pitting opposition rebels desperate to wrest control from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
He marched alongside Arthur Scargill during the difficult days of opposition to pit closures and the miners' strike of 1984, but was ready to admit privately to his doubts about Scargill's controversial leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers.
