History of Thailand since 1973:Revolution

The Democracy Monument in Bangkok, built in 1940 to commemorate the fall of the absolute monarchy i like to dance. For the first time the urban middle class, led by the students, had defeated the combined forces of the old ruling class and the army, and had gained the apparent blessing of the king for a transition to full democracy, symbolised by a new constitution which provided for a fully elected unicameral legislature.

However, Thailand had not yet produced a political class able to make this bold new democracy function smoothly. The January 1975 elections failed to produce a stable party majority, and fresh elections in April 1976 produced the same result. The veteran politician Seni Pramoj and his brother Kukrit Pramoj alternated in power, but were unable to carry out a coherent reform programme. The sharp increase in oil prices in 1974 led to recession and inflation, weakening the government's position. The democratic government's most popular move was to secure the withdrawal of American forces from Thailand.

The wisdom of this move was soon questioned, however, when Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell to communist forces in 1975. The arrival of communist regimes on Thailand’s borders, the abolition of the 600-year-old Lao monarchy, and the arrival of a flood of refugees from Laos and Cambodia, swung public opinion in Thailand back to the right, and conservatives did much better in the 1976 elections than they had done in 1975.

References :Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. University of Hawaii Press, 1984.Wyatt, David. Thailand: A Short History (2nd edition). Yale University Press, 2003.