[The
king’s heir apparent, the jet-setting crown prince, has a reputation as a
playboy and faces an uphill battle to win the trust and adoration his father
has achieved. Many Thais hoped that Princess Sirindhorn, the crown prince’s
sister, who has won hearts through her charitable causes and dealings with the
poor, might succeed her father, but palace law bars women from the throne.]
By Thomas Fuller
 |
An image of the king outside a
shop in
The New York Times |
Worries
over the king’s health have cast a pall of anxiety across the country, which
has one of the worst performing economies in Asia and isruled by a military junta that seized
power last year.
While
reverence for the king was once the only thing that this fractured country
could agree on, today the future of the Thai monarchy is uncertain.
The
king’s heir apparent, the jet-setting crown prince, has a reputation as a
playboy and faces an uphill battle to win the trust and adoration his father
has achieved. Many Thais hoped that Princess Sirindhorn, the crown prince’s
sister, who has won hearts through her charitable causes and dealings with the
poor, might succeed her father, but palace law bars women from the throne.
Worries
over the transition have accelerated an extremely delicate debate over what
kind of monarchy Thailand
The
law is interpreted broadly, and barely a month goes by without someone being
convicted under it and sent to jail for up to 15 years.
Still,
the Internet churns with anonymous social media commentary and videos deriding
the monarchy, and a growing underground republican movement is challenging its
very premise.
“The
current anti-monarchy movement is due to the very fact that the monarchy is now
made into almighty god,” said Sulak Sivaraksa, a social activist and scholar
who has been charged or arrested five times for his outspokenness about the
king. “The more you make the monarchy sacred, the more it becomes unaccountable
and something beyond common sense.”
The
support for such views is impossible to gauge. How popular is Crown Prince
Vajiralongkorn, who has divorced or separated from three wives and in recent
years spent half of his time in Europe ?
No one knows, because you cannot have a poll on the subject. Would Thais prefer
some other system? Other than anonymous Internet posts and expatriate critics, it
is not up for discussion.
Even
efforts to talk about having such a conversation have been quickly shot down or
retracted. In 2010, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, speaking at Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington
“I
think we have to talk about the institution of the monarchy,” he said. “How it
would have to reform itself to the modern globalized world. Like what the
British or the Dutch or the Danish or the Liechtenstein monarchy has gone through to adjust itself
to the modern world.”
A
government spokesman quickly distanced the government from the comments, saying
they were “personal” and not official policy.
One
way to assay the strength of the anti-monarchy movement might be by sizing up
the military government’s efforts to counter it. The junta, which claims
legitimacy from the king’s blessing, has positioned itself as the institution’s
ultimate defender.
The
ruling generals have been aggressive in jailing critics of the monarchy and this
year alone are spending $540 million, more than the entire budget for the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on a promotional campaign called “Worship, protect
and uphold the monarchy.”
The
campaign includes television commercials, seminars in schools and prisons, singing
contests and competitions to write novels and make short films praising the
king. The military also erected giant statues of past kings in the seaside town
of Hua Hin
“This
is not propaganda,” Prayuth Chan-ocha, the leader of the junta, said several
months after seizing power last year. The youth, he said, “must be educated on
what the king has done.”
In
recent months the military has also appeared eager to burnish the reputation of
the crown prince. Last month, Mr. Prayuth spent hours with the crown prince
touring Bangkok
The
crown prince, 63, has been shown in Thai media and YouTube videosas youthful, athletic
and a doting father, a contrast to the “Don Juan” the queen once called him.
Mr.
Kasit, the former foreign minister, said the bicycle tour was a “turning point”
for the prince.
“There
are no more doubts inside the military establishment as to who will be the next
monarch of Thailand
The
military’s backing of the prince, indeed its alliance with the monarchy, is
seen as mutually beneficial. The king is the head of the Thai armed forces and
must endorse all new governments and major appointments. Critics say the
military and Bangkok
The
absolute monarchy was abolished in Thailand
Those
who regard it as atavistic need not look far for potent symbols. In rituals
that seem to hark from a different era, Thais humbly crawl or kneel before the
king, a tradition abolished in the 19th century and resurrected during
Bhumibol’s reign. His subjects refer to themselves as “the dust under your feet.”
Although
rarely seen in public because of his age and illness, he is everywhere. His
portraits hang from the facades of government buildings, crown the entrance to
airports and are de rigueur in offices and schools.
In
a country where average household income is less than $9,000 a year, Bhumibol
is almost unfathomably rich. In addition to the king’s personal holdings, the
Crown Property Bureau, a royal trust, controls more than $37 billion in assets,
which produce hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income that, according
to Thai law, can be spent “at the king’s pleasure.”
The
republican movement was precipitated in part by the rise of Thaksin Shinawatra,
a business tycoon turned populist politician whose influence and popularity in
rural areas were seen as threats to the royal establishment and Bangkok
The
military ousted Mr. Thaksin as prime minister in 2006, and overthrew a
government led by his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, last year, but his followers
remain the core of the most powerful political movement in modern Thai history.
The king sided with the military in both coups.
Military
rule has papered over those divisions, silencing critics and jailing former
members of the government. But unifying the country remains the most pressing
challenge for both the junta and the future king.
The
royal succession presents the monarchy with an inflection point, and possibly
an opportunity.
“The
situation of the Thai monarchy will not remain like this for many more years,”
Somsak Jeamteerasakul, one of the leading experts on the monarchy, wrote in a
Facebook post last December. “There are two options for the future. Either
transform to a modern monarchy like in Europe or Japan
Some
Thais cite the wisdom of a venerated 19th-century king, Chulalongkorn, who
wrote an open letter to his son outlining the requirements for a monarch.
Be
humble and avoid vengefulness, he advised. “Being a king means not to be
wealthy. It means not bullying others.”
Failure
to follow this advice, he said, might lead “our clan to disappear.”
