LONDON -- Democracy is fine as long as the voters elect the right people, but they often get it wrong. The Palestinians elected Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, so the Israelis and their allies overseas have to persuade them of the error of their ways with bombs, bullets and a financial blockade. And in Thailand they were going to vote for Thaksin Shinawatra again.
"They" were the rural poor, still a majority in Thailand, who have been left behind by the economic miracle of the past 20 years. They elected the billionaire Thaksin three times in a row because he gave them cheap health care and put money in their pockets. The Bangkok middle class despised him for his populism and his corruption, but the poor were almost certainly going to elect him again -- so for the first time in 15 years, the Thai Army rolled its tanks into Bangkok.
So much for Thai democracy -- and the bizarre thing is that the rest of the world doesn't seem to care. There have been no thunderous denunciations of the military junta -- sorry, the Administrative Reform Council -- that now runs Thailand, just murmurs of regret in Washington, London, Paris and Tokyo that it has come to this. There will be no sanctions, no boycott of the military regime (which promises to hand back power to an elected government within a year, but only after rewriting the constitution), no vigils for democracy.