Thailand once again has an elected prime minister after 16 months of military rule. This week's royal endorsement of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej will create fresh hopes that a period of messy political conflict has come to an end.
When Thais went to the polls on December 23, 2007, they were confronted with two serious options. On the one hand, they could support the Democrat Party which hitched its venerable wagon to the 2006 military coup. The other option, one that proved to be significantly more popular, was to vote for Samak's People Power Party.
The People Power Party is a proxy for the banned political machine built by ousted prime minister and telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra. It adopted wholesale the pro-rural, pro-business policies that defined Thaksin's period in office. Throughout the recent election campaign it also insisted on trumpeting its direct links to the former government.
At its heart, People Power is a vehicle for the powerful networks and personalities some of whom have been barred from political activities closest to Thaksin. Drawing on the enduring strength of rural feeling for the deposed government, the People Power Party won 228 of the 480 seats in the December poll, falling just short of an absolute majority. However, in coalition with a motley group of minor parties, Samak, as leader of the People Power Party, has now secured sufficient support to take the reigns of legislative power.
Samak is a distinctive, bombastic and polarising figure. His long career has been punctuated by association with some of the biggest political controversies in living memory. For his critics and there are many his involvement in the brutal repression of student protests in the 1970s left an indelible black mark. Another black mark is his role as deputy prime minister during the 1992 crackdown on the middle class pro-democracy demonstrations in Bangkok. And in some quarters there are ongoing rumblings about Samak's allegedly corrupt management of contracts during his recent tenure as governor of Bangkok.
However, in his current political incarnation as leader of the People Power Party, Samak has managed to overcome this history. He has skilfully ridden the tide of popular resentment against the generals who orchestrated the anti-Thaksin coup of September 2006 and then so hopelessly mismanaged the country.
That tide of resentment has undermined the stated goals of the now-defunct military government. In their 16 months in charge, the generals failed to fully dismember the Thaksin networks. And their efforts to bring the former prime minister to justice for his alleged corruption and human-rights abuses got bogged down.
Month by month the military's incompetence made a mockery of their undemocratic intervention and whittled away any support they once had. Their most profound failure is represented by the electoral success of Samak and the People Power Party. After the coup, the generals hoped to engineer a political landscape, with a new and regressive constitution, that would preclude strong governments and dominant "Thaksin-style" prime ministers. In particular, they hoped to guarantee a political system where Thaksin, and those from his networks, could not take control.
!As demonstrated by this week's reincarnation of the former government, these efforts to discredit Thaksin and his proxy party never really caught on. The election result reboots the political landscape to a time when Thaksin and his networks were ascendant.
Ultimately, the military, and its elite backers including the palace, misjudged the level of enduring popular support he enjoyed. Millions of people across rural Thailand still have fond memories of Thaksin's rule and hope, no doubt, that his victorious proxy party will not only improve the flagging economy but also refocus attention on the issues that matter most to them. Access to credit, agricultural inputs, education and health care are popularly considered the hallmarks of Thaksin-style politics.
His opponents in the media, military and among the elite disdain these policies as "populist". But Thaksin merely reflected the interests and aspirations of those he counted on for support. Much to the horror of some in the royally aligned military and bureaucratic elite, millions of Thailand's poor still endorse Thaksin-style "populism". Many ordinary Thais insist that this is simply democracy at work.
Another coup in Thailand would likely trigger such popular outrage and international condemnation that it cannot be contemplated in the immediate future. With the troops now back in their barracks, elected politicians once again have an opportunity to press their case for a permanent and stable democracy.
They are faced with the huge task of rebuilding and improving democratic institutions. The new Government also confronts the persistent view held by many establishment figures that the Thai electorate is incapable of making rational political decisions and that national leadership is best exercised by Thailand's royalist elite.
In the post-coup environment reinforcing the primacy of the ballot-box will be a big undertaking. But as Thailand looks towards the turbulent times ahead, forging a democratic culture of respect for the decisions of Thai voters may be the best way to guarantee future peace and prosperity.
Nicholas Farrelly is a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Andrew Walker is an anthropologist at the Australian National University. Together they co-founded New Mandala, a website that provides ongoing commentary on South-East Asian affairs.