Word: coups
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...general who led Thailand's first coup in 15 years, Sonthi Boonyaratglin is projecting a deliberately civilian image. Dressed in a dapper dark suit and yellow tie, Sonthi eschewed his usual army uniform for his Feb. 27 meeting with TIME's Hannah Beech and Robert Horn. But a suit, no matter how handsome, cannot suspend the reality that a military junta, called the Council for National Security (CNS), now runs the country. The CNS ousted elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last Sept. 19. At first, the overthrow of the billionaire P.M. was greeted with much public acclaim. Today, however...
...oversee and scrutinize the government's actions. The previous government wanted to control the whole system. That [led to] large-scale corruption [and] vote buying during local and general elections. The people knew about these things and they could not accept it. As far as the army staging a coup, we could not just do it on our own. We needed the consent of the people to help us preserve democracy...
...TIME: How do you respond to Western criticism of the coup as a step back for democracy? SONTHI: Everybody wants to walk forward if the path is clear. But if we walk forward and see that there are thorns in front, it is not wise to walk on top of those thorns. It is better to stop, step back and find another way around...
...They could not. For the next two decades Ghana was wracked by instability and economic mismanagement. A revolving cast of military leaders left people with little faith in their government and no chance to change things. It was a cancer eating the entire continent: beginning with the first successful coup in sub-Saharan Africa in Togo in 1963, there were at least 200 attempts to seize power in Africa over the following four decades, 80 or so successful. Bitter civil wars erupted, some of them tribal struggles for natural resources, some of them fueled by foreign powers...
...DESPAIR AND HUMILIATION Suzzy Afua Deh was 5 at the time of Ghana's first coup. She remembers those early years with fondness. "Life then was easy because my father worked," she told me as we sat outside her two-room breeze-block house in Lapaz, a poor neighborhood of dirt roads and street hustlers in northwestern Accra. "Everything was O.K." Suzzy, who is now 46, stayed behind with her grandparents in Fodome when her parents moved to Accra. The extended African family has always been a welcome insurance policy when times get tough...