New Mandala

In my very first New Mandala post (from June 2006) I wrote:
Many of Thailand’s pro-democracy commentators seem to be promoting a form of democracy-lite in which democracy is embodied in bureaucratic institutions based in Bangkok. Popular election by all Thai people is an inconvenient add-on that hampers the potential for benign leadership from Bangkok, whether [...]

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…what ensured the success of the coup was the middle classes’ uneasiness with democracy. The middle class, while supportive of democracy as an ideal, was not at ease with the system in reality. Its fierce onslaught on the flaws of the system was taken by the military as a veiled request for a takeover of [...]

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