Thai Coup: Six Weeks In
Seth Mydans had a good story in yesterday’s IHT:
It was a smiling coup for the Land of Smiles, quick, neat, bloodless and broadly popular among the citizens of Bangkok. For several days, the tanks in the streets were a sort of petting zoo as families brought their children to climb onto the big, friendly machines.Now, six weeks later, the tanks are gone, the mess of politics has reasserted itself and the generals are fumbling a bit with their new image as managers. People have begun to complain that these fix-it men have not yet produced what one foreign political analyst called “instant democracy.”
(Emphasis mine.)