By the early 1990s, Buddhism was on the resurgence. The wat still remained as an important focus of social life. Lines of monks could accept morning offerings from the faithful without interference and attendance at Buddhist ceremonies increased again. At the annual Pha That Luang Festival, most members of the Politburo could be seen making offerings to monks. (Trenkell 2000, p. 198). Now party officials also engage more visibly in the worship of the relics enshrined in this monument and thereby reaffirm the relationship between Buddhism and the state – a long-standing feature of Buddhism, its cosmology and the political sphere. Moreover, in 2003 and 2010 the Ministry of Information and Culture inaugurated statues of King Fa Ngum and King Anouvong"." The rituals surrounding the worship of relics and statues have become displays of the patronage power of the Lao government that thereby is intending to connect itself to a glorious Buddhist past in order to increase its legitimacy in the present. However, many state rituals have also been carefully re-engineered since 1975.