Word: revolts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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TIME Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand, who was in Bangkok at the time of the revolt, sent this report...
...military dictatorship of Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn, 62, was inefficient, authoritarian and beset with economic problems. There was wide discontent because of the rising cost of rice and Thanom's police-state methods. The revolt that abruptly brought down his regime started when university students in Bangkok issued a list of mild demands that seemed to have goals more appropriate to Disraeli than Mao: a new constitution (the old one had been arbitrarily scrapped by the military government in 1971) and free elections. To the government, however, the demands amounted to near sedition. Twelve student demonstrators and professors were...
...King, though relatively powerless, has great prestige with the people. With the support of key military officers, he used the revolt as a lever to pry the unpopular Thanom from office. The students clearly had won a stunning victory. Cheering and pounding on the sides of commandeered buses, they sped through Bangkok waving Thai flags and holding up portraits of the King...
...spokesman, C.L. Stermer, said that it would be "premature to attach a political identity" to the revolt. He said that there has been growing "criticism in the Thai community against its military" and that the students desired a return to what he called parliamentary democracy...
Stermer said that the speeches of student leaders in no way indicated that the revolt implied opposition to American military presence in Thailand, as some observers speculated...