The People s Committee s position deserves explanation, if not agreement. Since the turn of the century, Thaksin s party machines, powered by his populist policies, have overcome constant challenges from both the military and the Constitutional Court to beat the conservative royalist Democrats in every election.

A second priority will be to decide the fate of Nepal s centuries old monarchy. The Maoists ran on an anti royalist platform, and it is widely anticipated that the first meeting of the Assembly will abolish the monarchy and declare Nepal a people s republic.

By late 1965, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser had sent 70,000 troops in Yemen to support a republican coup against royalist forces. Despite using prohibited chemical weapons against Yemeni guerillas from 1963 to 1967 a first in an intra Arab conflict Egypt failed to achieve its objectives.

A grenade attack on an opposition rally led by Sam Rainsy in March 1997 killed 16 people and injured more than a hundred. That July, after an uneasy period of sharing power with Prince Norodom Ranariddh s royalist party, Hun Sen launched a bloody coup in which his opponents were exiled, arrested, tortured, and in some cases summarily executed.