And the word went out, and there was happiness everywhere. Or there soon will be. Or else.
Just over two weeks ago, Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha was the commander of the Royal Thai Army, concerned that his country was pulling itself apart from the inside out. Now he is commander of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), the third and final name of the junta he is certain will calm, reconcile, reform and rejuvenate the nation. In that order, according to his three-part plan.
Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha (Photo by Pattarachai Preechapanich)
First is calm. There have been several thousand arrests, some of which have been officially designated as "invitations". The military has designated these detainees as troublemakers, however obvious it is that some are more threatening to peace than others.
The flash mobs of anti-coup protesters are particularly troublesome. Last weekend, they were out in the hundreds - almost as numerous as the photographers. They easily avoided the army's shows of force. While they pose no threat to the junta's power, their high profile creates an impression that maybe army discipline isn't really working.
By contrast, the core members of possible anti-military resistance groups are actually easier problems. They are almost all well-known, well-scouted and even if not detained - overseas exiles for example - they are reasonably easily neutralised. Most are red shirts, and thus there won't be any curfew-lifting for a while in certain areas of Bangkok, the North and Northeast.
Other contributors to a sense of un-calm are at a keyboard, peering at a smartphone or behind a camera. Gen Prayuth and staff have left the actual rules of censorship so unclear, so opaque that self-censorship is doing the job of hundreds of censors for broadcasters, internet contributors and the mainstream media.
The big jobs now are reconciliation and preparing for reform.
You may remember reconciliation. It was the top subject in the 2011 election campaign, when that young woman, the political novice, convinced people to elect a Pheu Thai government. She made a few reconciling moves, but all in all was pretty much a failure at it.
Gen Prayuth plans for success. He has hand-picked the man for the job.
The student named as having the best personality in his Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy Class 27, Lt Gen Kampanart Ruddith, won applause from peers as the best man to direct the job of national reconciliation. His plan is pretty simple. He will set up military-led teams in pretty well every village, tambon, district, province and city in the land, and people will agree to get along despite their political differences. Or else.
Of course, it would be great if red shirts agree to respect the opinions of yellow shirts and vice versa. But if they don't ... well, they will. Or else.
While Lt Gen Kampanart's Reconciliation Centres for Reform are bringing about national unity, military style, a parallel effort is going to begin a political reform movement. That was tried under the government of the young man and political newcomer Abhisit Vejjajiva, but he was pretty much a failure at it. Gen Prayuth plans for success. He has hand-picked the man for the job.
Gen Surasak Kanchanarat, a friend of Gen Prayuth from their youthful days at the Armed Forces Academies Prep School, will lead the working panel. His initial plan is pretty simple. For the next couple of months, anyone with an idea about reforming the political system should submit it. After that, expert panels will go to work to put it into writing, so it can be put into practice.
After all of this calm stops the rending of the nation, and reconciliation rules the land, Gen Prayuth promises to move more dynamically. There will be an appointed government, and his lawyers are at work as you read this, writing a draft constitution to replace that old thing he abrogated on May 22.
This is the reform stage, and no one has said out loud yet that it is the stage at which the country starts getting divided again. There are changes coming to the election system, the cabinet system. "Honest people will run the country," Gen Prayuth said last week, which is good news if you like your ministers appointed by a council of wise men.
Then there will be a supervised and "absolute democratic election", details of which are to come. That is stage three, when the army will go back to the barracks. Maybe.
This will take 15 months, give or take, according to the general. In the meantime, getting on with the “calm” phase is his task. And it is extremely important that critics butt out for a while, because optimism and a can-do spirit and total support for the leadership is required for the country to work again.
While the junta stuck largely to its playbook, written in the 1950s and rarely updated, it also showed signs it might be able to adapt. And nothing has changed so much since the heyday of Plaek Pibulsonggram as communications.
Back then, all a self-respecting general had to do was to drive some tanks up to the leader’s home, control the switch that controlled the radio stations, and put a few soldiers in the lovely Charoen Krung Road office of the Telephone Organisation of Thailand to close all foreign communications and most Bangkok telephones.
Now, there's the internet, not to mention the 120% of Thais who own a mobile phone. And the generals can’t just cut them off, because they depend upon them even more than a flash mob deciding Terminal 21 is today's protest site.
In 1992, and again in 2010, the military was simply overwhelmed by the communication abilities of those darned protesters. Gen Prayuth and what is actually a highly skilled technology branch of the army are adapting.
The internet stays, but it will all go through one choke point for checking. Any website, Book of Face, tweeter or cheater, anyone not up to snuff at the checkpoint will be eliminated with prejudice. All others can pass after a brief delay.
Mobile phones stay, but it is believed that some foreign firms have been contacted about certain equipment that can ... well, you know.
Something that has been done for several years now will undergo modernisation. Retrofitting of communications is under way that will put the old internet censorship operators and the old telephone monitors out of business and move in a new generation of virtual information gathering, fit for the Snowden age.
The plan to demand that Line turn over information on unfriendly messengers? Forget it. There is no need to ask the Japanese for such information. Google and YouTube also, their help is no longer required.
Luckily, as the top police expert Pol Maj Gen Pisit Pao-in put it, Thais now are contented under a regime dedicated to their well-being, and they have no reason to send provocative messages that violate NCPO guidelines. But just in case a few stray internet rapscallions fail to follow the crowd to a happy place, the new system will be able to identify and deal with them.