Word: monarch
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...architect of the 1991 army coup that culminated in a bloody crackdown against demonstrators in May 1992. Thailand's version of Tiananmen ended when the King brought together the country's two main political antagonists, who were pictured on television kneeling in front of the stern-faced monarch. In a surprising move on Monday, a group of Thai senators filed a petition to the King pleading for him to intervene to end the bloody political standoff on Bangkok's streets. Luckily, this clash was resolved. But what happens next time...
...rest of the discarded pictures were also of the world's longest-serving monarch, some capturing him in ceremonial regalia, one showing him playing a jazz saxophone. Apirat shook his head as water dripped on the images, which were left behind when the Red Shirts abandoned their post and started the trip back to their homes across the nation. An unspoken question hovered in the air: What were pictures of Thailand's King, beloved by millions, doing forsaken in the middle of what hours before had been a potential battle zone? (See pictures of the week's protests...
...more than six decades, Thailand's Buddhist majority has been remarkably unified under the country's King. Considered above politics, the 81-year-old monarch rarely comments on political matters and instead stands as a suprasymbol of Thai cohesion. His picture graces most every restaurant and business in the land, and a giant billboard of his visage with the words "Long Live the King" greets visitors at Bangkok's airport. For years, millions of Thais wore yellow every Monday in a voluntary show of support for the King, who was born on the first day of the week...
...recent months, the Thai political landscape has seemingly shifted. While opposition Red Shirt politicians still publicly pledge loyalty to the monarch, their figurehead, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has openly alleged that one of the King's closest advisers was behind the 2006 army coup that unseated him. That adviser, General Prem Tinsulanonda, has dismissed the charge. Thaksin and his Red Shirt cohorts have been at pains to underline that they don't think the King himself had anything to do with the putsch that overthrew one of Thailand's most popular - but also most divisive - Prime Ministers...
...Notably, when the Red Shirts thronged central Bangkok by the thousands, few held aloft pictures of the Thai monarch. The absence was marked, especially compared with the omnipresent images of the King clutched by Yellow Shirt protesters last year, when they besieged Bangkok's airports for a week in an effort to unseat the government, which was then essentially a Thaksin proxy party. (Late last year, a Thai court dissolved that ruling party. The opposition Democrats - led by current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva - took over, prompting the Red Shirts to initiate their protest movement.) Indeed, the Yellow Shirts' very choice...