BANGKOK, Sept. 20 — The generals billed it as a pro-democracy military coup, and although they had ousted one of the most popular prime ministers in Thailand’s history, most commentators here tended to agree on Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, top military commanders deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a nonviolent coup while he was in New York, concluding a debilitating political standoff that was increasingly dividing the country.
On Wednesday, the coup leader, Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin, said that he had acted “to bring back normality and harmony” and that he intended to “return power to the Thai people as soon as possible.”
That, in so many words, was the hope of Thailand’s elite, who had accused Mr. Thaksin of corruption and of destroying democratic institutions. But he was overwhelmingly supported by rural voters, who gave him Thailand’s first outright majority in Parliament.
The coup received the explicit endorsement of King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Wednesday, when he appointed General Sonthi to lead the governing council “in order to create peace in the country.”
For months, Mr. Thaksin had jousted with the king and blamed an unnamed “charismatic figure” for his troubles. As tension mounted, a member of the king’s inner circle met with troops to remind them of their loyalty to the palace.
The coup was unlikely to affect the foreign policy of Thailand, a quiet supporting player in America’s effort to curb terrorism and a major economic partner after a strong rebound from the financial crisis of the late 1990’s.
But with the coup, Thailand became one more Southeast Asian nation that has reinterpreted democracy in undemocratic terms, either manipulating or sidestepping constitutional processes to achieve political ends.
“The crisis in the immediate term has been resolved,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.
“Thaksin is out of the picture for now,” he said. “We can move forward with political reforms. But in the medium and longer term he is still around and his supporters are still around. We have been put back at square one. We’ve got to get out of this vicious cycle of constitution, election, corruption and coup.”
Until Tuesday, it had seemed that Thailand had left behind its long era of repeated coups, slowly consolidating constitutional rule over the past 15 years. In March, General Sonthi himself said, “Military coups are a thing of the past.”
Now both Thailand and the Philippines, the region’s two exemplars of democracy, have ousted democratically elected leaders.
Other Southeast Asian nations are ruled with varying degrees of authoritarianism, while staying close to some rules of the democratic playbook.
In a turnaround, it is now Indonesia that has the most thoroughgoing, though fragile, democracy, after 32 years of dictatorship under Suharto, who was ousted as president in 1998.
Each nation argues that its departures from democracy are a necessary response to local conditions.
Singapore, for example, cites its precarious position as a tiny mainly Chinese nation squeezed between much larger Malay neighbors, and its combustible mix of a multiethnic population.
Myanmar, formerly Burma, says it must maintain its repressive military rule to keep ethnic tensions from bursting into a full-fledged civil war. But it is nevertheless going through the motions of democratic process, with plans to reopen a constitutional convention next month.
Vietnam and Laos are thoroughly Communist nations, following what they call the democratic structures of regular parliamentary votes and five-year plans.
The Philippines, like Thailand, has said that democratic processes have broken down and that only the military can clean house and set the country back on course.
Calling Tuesday’s coup a hiccup, Kavi Chongkittavorn, a political commentator at the daily newspaper The Nation, said: “It was a necessary evil, if you look at it. There were no other options to end this political cul-de-sac.”
But he conceded: “It is a contradiction in terms to have a military coup that calls for political reform. That’s the dilemma.”
At a news conference, General Sonthi offered both good news and bad news for those who seek a quick return to democratic rule.
He said he would choose an interim civilian prime minister within two weeks and then, “We step out.”
But he said that interim government would have the task of drawing up a new constitution, putting it to a referendum and then holding parliamentary elections, a process that would take well over a year.
“The foundation of the state has been shaken to its core during the last five to six years, so with or without a military coup it would have taken a long time to heal and to be re-established,” said Surin Pitsuwan, a former foreign minister who is now in the opposition.
By the time it is re-established, Thailand’s political scene will have changed in unpredictable ways, analysts said.
They said Mr. Thaksin himself was unlikely to return to Thailand in the near future. He could face lawsuits here, a trial and even prison on various charges of corruption.
But he is a stubborn man, and his presence, even abroad, is likely to shadow Thai politics as it goes through its difficult transition.
He still has powerful allies in Thailand, but the analysts said his party, Thai Rak Thai, or Thais Love Thais, could well disintegrate during the year ahead without the forceful leader who created it as a personal tool.
One effect of his five years of dominance, though, is the absence of any obvious alternative to his political leadership. The main opposition party, the Democrat Party, has been notable in its inability to capitalize on Mr. Thaksin’s difficulties.
A main task of the interim government will be to heal the rifts Mr. Thaksin has created, avoiding vendettas that could devolve into what Mr. Thitinan called “an endless revenge and recrimination cycle.”
At the same time, he said, new governments should embrace one of Mr. Thaksin’s positive legacies, a focus on the needs of the poor, with programs like village development funds, debt forgiveness and low-cost health care.
These populist measures, however calculating and paternalistic, addressed long-neglected needs of the majority of the population.
“He did have a positive legacy with the grass roots,” Mr. Thitinan said. “The mistake will be to reject everything Thaksin did.”