Thailand:Thailand's 2006 military coup pitted plutocracy and hereditary monarchy against each other. The painfully slow democratic revolution is far from over, writes Victor Mallet.
These are strange times in Thailand. The old certainties of the once vigorous southeast Asian kingdom have given way to doubt and confusion.
The Thai economy, for all its reputation as an engine of the post-war Asian "miracle", is growing peculiarly slowly. With domestic investors reluctant to spend, Thailand's 65 million people will be lucky to see gross domestic product expansion of 4 per cent this year. Thais used to call that kind of growth a recession.
Surely, though, the place remains a peaceful land of smiles? Only if you do not count bombs, beheadings and the murder of teachers in front of their pupils: in the predominantly Muslim Malay provinces of the far south, the Islamist and separatist Liberation Fighters of Pattani are waging violent war against what they regard as a Thai Buddhist occupation.
More than 2,300 people have been killed. When a deranged man, assumed to be a Muslim, desecrated the Erawan shrine in central Bangkok last year, he was immediately beaten to death by bystanders. What of the Thai appetite for modernisation, so evident before the Asian financial crisis of 1997?
It depends what is meant by "modern". Bangkok boasts a new underground railway system as well as the elevated SkyTrain, but since last September the country has been run by the old-fashioned military junta that overthrew the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former telecommunications tycoon who now may face extradition proceedings from Britain on corruption charges. Thailand's infrastructure hardware is modern. The institutional software is not.
Thais, having initially shrugged off the coup, are anxious about the bunglings of the military-appointed interim government, the increasingly overt political ambitions of Gen Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, the coup leader, and uncertainty over the royal succession.
Neither king Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, nor Prem Tinsulanonda, his faithful 86-year-old privy counsellor and the man said to have engineered the coup, can live forever.
Thais have taken refuge in superstition, flocking to the town of Nakhon Si Thammarat to buy supposedly magical amulets showing two mythical Hindu figures and produced by profiteering Buddhist temples.
"It represents the confusion in our society at the moment," says one sceptical Thai banker in Bangkok. "It's become a cult."
So what went wrong? The prosperous, middle-class residents of Bangkok had protested against Thaksin and were happy to see him ousted - even by an army coup that confirmed Thailand's reputation for political instability - but now that he has gone they are beginning to reassess his legacy.
It is not that they have warmed to his authoritarian style of government, the corruption in his administration or his vulgar populism, but they recognise now that he did bring a version of normal democratic politics to the neglected rural areas of Thailand.
Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai ("Thais love Thais") party was the first in the country to win an absolute majority in parliament, because it not only bought votes in the traditional manner - with cash - but also offered policies that voters liked such as cheap healthcare, as well as a leader with charisma.
Thaksin, however, was a better populist than politician.
In his five years in charge, he alienated all the sources of power in Thailand, including rival Thai-Chinese business families, the army, the left-wing non-government groups that originally supported him - and, above all, the palace.
Unlike his predecessors, Thaksin did not yield to the wishes of the king and was even considered to be vying with him for the adulation of the rural populace.
Whereas king Bhumibol offers Buddhist restraint and an inward-looking "sufficiency economy", Thaksin served up global consumerism and the chance of wealth for all, Deng Xiaoping-style.
Perhaps, it was whispered, Thaksin wanted to be Thailand's first president. "The political struggle that engulfed Thailand during 2006 ultimately pitted two inherently undemocratic forces against each other: plutocracy and hereditary monarchy," wrote the Singapore-based political analyst, Michael Montesano.
Thailand's elite hit back hard. The king, although in theory a constitutional ruler since the abolition of the absolute monarchy in 1932, wields real if diminishing influence and has long had close ties to the armed forces.
All sides in politics say the aim of the coup, and the new constitution set to be approved by tomorrow's referendum, has been to return Thailand to its pre-Thaksin system of weak parliamentary government marked by successive coalitions of venal politicians and a crucial deus ex machinarole for the royal family and the army.
To the consternation of the establishment, the plan is not working well. Thaksin's assets have been frozen, Thai Rak Thai disbanded and the army's budget increased. Thaksin himself is not keen to return.
But even the leaders of the rival Democrat party acknowledge that Thaksin - who has just bought Manchester City football club, says he spends his days "kicking around the streets of London" and can be seen wandering through the halls of Harrods department store - remains popular at home.
Ominously for the palace, Thaksin's supporters last month even dared to stage a protest - which turned violent - outside Prem's house.
Thailand's painfully slow democratic revolution is far from over.
- (Financial Times service)