ONCE democracy is set aside it can take a long time to get it back. Ask Pakistan.

So the reassurances of the leaders of the military coup in Thailand that there will be a new general election in something over a year ring hollow. The coup represents a long step backwards that will undermine the progress of democracy in the region.

The most stabilising influence would seem to come from the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 78, whose picture adorns the walls of restaurants and offices across the country. The coup leaders claim to be acting with his support.

The more that is true (and the King, who speaks rarely, has yet to comment), the better the hopes for immediate stability in Thailand. But that is not the same thing as democracy — or long-term peace.

There is one uncomfortable feature of Thai politics that led to the coup, and which is common to many rapidly developing countries, including India: the deep rift between the rural poor and the huge urban populations.

Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed Prime Minister, owed his overwhelming majorities in 2001 and 2005 to the support of rural areas (although he would not have won without some support in the towns, too).

That point exposes the bankruptcy of the justifications given by General Sondhi Boonyaratglin for the coup. The complaints against Mr Thaksin are about his handling of the office of prime minister: putting cronies in key jobs and pouring cash into the countryside to secure his vote. Many of these complaints are well founded; he was a poor prime minister.

But the complaints did not generally extend to the conduct of the elections themselves. Mr Thaksin was popularly and overwhelmingly elected. The army chief’s reasons for deposing him count for little against that central point.

If Mr Thaksin were allowed to stand for election now he may still win. That is why General Sondhi’s plan to allow at least a year for writing a new constitution, which would permit a new general election, is ominous. His clear intention is to rewrite the rules so that Mr Thaksin cannot win. The changes are “necessary to institute reforms to resolve a political stalemate”, in a preposterous euphemism. General Sondhi says that he — or an appointed interim government — will make sure that the electoral commission is stripped of Mr Thaksin’s cronies. The Prime Minister was hardly blameless in that department, but this declaration perverts the vocabulary of democracy. Even if elections do take place in a little over a year, it is not clear that they will be fair.

Thailand had boasted that it had not suffered a coup for 15 years, like a patient distancing himself from the last discerned symptoms of a disease. But this coup, the 18th since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, is an unfortunate echo of the past.

That does not mean Thailand has a propensity for coups that it will never shake off. Its development in the past 15 years gives it some protection against a repetition of the past. But it is Thailand’s difficulty in coping with those radical economic and social changes that has given rise to this crisis. And that is an affliction that could affect other countries in the region, torn between their past, in the deep rural areas, and their future, in the cities.

Outside pressure for stability will count for something. There was immediate condemnation from America, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand. The Thai stock market was closed yesterday but the baht currency is liable to slide, the vaguer the commitment to democracy.

Pictures yesterday of the armed forces chiefs heading to the palace may reassure the rural poor by implying that the coup is backed by the Crown. But they are still likely to feel, with justice, that the Prime Minister whom they put in power has been stolen from them.

India demonstrates how sharply a country can swing between parties because of the clash of interests between cities and the hinterland. The Congress party turfed out the BJP nationalist party in the 2004 elections, in an extraordinary upset, because of rural resentment at the BJP’s “India Shining” slogan, which glorified the cities’ astounding development.

But India managed that about-turn democratically. The country’s sympathies may still be divided, but at least there is no question about the Government’s legitimacy. The same surely goes for Thailand. Peace may prove elusive until it returns to democracy.

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