Regional integration will decide Thailand's fate

Your perceptive editorial rightly argues that honest politics is the best way to stop military coups. Yet the issue partly depends on what sort of putsch has occurred. In Thailand there has traditionally been a series of merry-go-round coups in which one ruling elite temporarily replaces another. The evidence lies in the string of discarded constitutions that on average lasted four years apiece. The coup of 2014 began perhaps the first serious attempt since 1932 to reform the country root and branch. If it succeeds, the events of May last year will be seen as a breakthrough. If not, yet another merry-go-round intervention has occurred.

Other countries offer a clue. In spite of the odds given at the time, the Philippines coup of 1985 to supplant Marcos and the Cambodian coup of 1997 to install Hun Sen have not been overturned by violent events. Instead, both those countries now have a rapidly rising middle class and economic growth rates outstripping Thailand’s. If Thailand is to avoid further military coups, it is surely imperative that the country play a leading and successful role in the Asian Economic Community, whose formal beginning is only weeks away.

Barry Kenyon