coup de grace

Y'all may have heard that things went a little wiggy in Thailand this past week. Yes, while the Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was visiting the biggest UN meeting of the year in the States, the army staged a coup and took over the country, apparently with the tacit approval of the King. The media in Canada went wild over the images of tanks rolling through the streets of Bangkok, but the photo in the Globe was rather telling: there was a mom feeding her kid while they sat casually by the side of the road checking out a tank. This pretty much confirmed what I figured was actually going on in Bangkok. Which is to say that most people probably went about their daily business and while a few folks were probably tossed into jail for protesting too much, nobody was killed or maimed. We hear that teachers and civil servants were told to stay at home for a day but that now everything is basically back to normal. While I'm glad we weren't around for the coup -- just in case of disaster, and plus I'm scared of crowds as you may remember from my previous post in which we got stuck in an anti-Thaksin protest march -- I'm not shocked that it happened. The military has taken over many times in the past in Thailand, and people seem to semi-accept it. I also think that it's very likely that there will be elections within a year given how keen the Thai seemed to be about elections in general. As for the new constitution that General Sonthi is planning to write....I dunno.

But you've got to keep in mind that Thailand is surrounded by, let's see, Laos (one party "elections"), Burma (one party, no elections, no nothing of anything), Cambodia (elections and a King but some really serious problems), and oh yes, China up to the north. So, c'mon, if there's an interim year of no elections, well, let's just see what happens before we cast judgement. All told, they're not doing so badly.

[Bangkok-23-September-2006]