After Thailand’s royalist army chief sent tanks rolling into Bangkok in September to oust Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister, the military coup-makers justified their power grab as essential for restoring “harmony” and “unity” to a deeply-divided Thai population.

For nearly a year beforehand, Bangkok had seen mass protests by middle-class urban dwellers challenging Mr Thaksin’s moral legitimacy, after his family’s tax-free Bt73bn ($2bn, £1bn, €1.6bn) sale of the family telecommunications empire. Thailand’s southern border provinces – home to a deeply disaffected ethnic Malay, Muslim minority – was racked by a bloody separatist insurgency that has seen nearly 1,900 people killed in drive-by shootings, bomb attacks and other violence over nearly three years.