[The
prince’s ascension also raises questions about the future of the monarchy, as a
less-beloved king could give strength to a republican movement that has gained
a foothold in recent years. Among the issues at stake is control over one of
the world’s great royal fortunes, an estimated $31 billion in real estate
holdings alone. Succession may force the consideration of an unresolved and
rarely discussed question of whether those assets and others are the property
of the royal family or of the Thai public.]
By Alison Smale and Thomas
Fuller
 |
|
Crown Prince Maha
Vajiralongkorn, with his mother, on his left, and sisters,
in Bangkok in 2010.
Credit Sukree Sukplang/Reuters
|
TUTZING,
Germany — For more than two
years, the king of Thailand lay ill in a Bangkok hospital. During much of that
time, his son, the heir to Thailand’s throne, was far from the kingdom, flying
around Europe in his Boeing 737 and ensconced in luxury villas and hotels amid
the misty lakes and mountains of southern Germany and Austria.
The lavish European lifestyle of the son,
Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, and his tastes for airplanes, fast cars, women and
the high life have caused great anxiety in the kingdom for decades. Now he is
on the cusp of ascending the throne.
The death of the beloved King Bhumibol
Adulyadej on Thursday has set in motion a succession that many Thais say they
wish they could avoid. King Bhumibol had been a unifying figure in a country
that is torn by deep divisions of class and politics and is currently ruled by
a military junta. The issue is whether the prince, seen by many Thais as
lacking the deep public devotion that his father enjoyed, can hold the country
together.
The prince’s ascension also raises questions
about the future of the monarchy, as a less-beloved king could give strength to
a republican movement that has gained a foothold in recent years. Among the
issues at stake is control over one of the world’s great royal fortunes, an
estimated $31 billion in real estate holdings alone. Succession may force the
consideration of an unresolved and rarely discussed question of whether those
assets and others are the property of the royal family or of the Thai public.
The crown prince, 64, has led a stormy life
of byzantine quarrels and breakups with various lovers that were rarely fully
elucidated in public. To his critics, his romantic liaisons have been more than
just a royal soap opera; they have raised questions about whether his character
suits the institution he is about to lead.
Having multiple lovers is a dynastic
tradition — his great-grandfather, King Rama V, had more than 150 wives and
consorts — but the prince’s former partners have endured spiteful separations
and the purged members of his entourage have died under suspicious
circumstances. His three divorces, and the brusque ways they were handled,
turned many Thais against him and left a trail of broken families, including
four children in the United States with whom he has cut ties.
The crown prince returned to Thailand in time
to be present for his father’s death on Thursday. But the timing of his
accession remains in question. Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, the prime minister,
surprised the nation on Thursday when he told reporters that the prince had
decided to wait until the “appropriate time” to ascend the throne, which is
still replete with the ancient pageantry and extreme formality made famous by
the musical “The King and I.”
What details are known of the crown prince’s
life are whispered and passed along furtively on social media in Thailand,
where the military government, enforcing a strict lèse-majesté law, has
sentenced dozens of people to long prison terms for offending the monarchy. The
law has been interpreted broadly, stifling most public discussion of anything
related to the royal family.
But piecing together the few details that
have emerged in public records, leaked documents and videos, and in
publications from abroad offers a glimpse into the man who stands to be
Thailand’s next king.
The prince was still married to his first
wife, his cousin Soamsawali Kitiyakara, in the 1970s and 80s when he fathered
five children with another woman, according to Thai news accounts at the time.
The other woman, an aspiring actress and a commoner, Sujarinee Vivacharawongse,
would become his second wife.
That second marriage ended in the late 1990s
in such acrimony that a public notice was posted at the prince’s palace
accusing Ms. Sujarinee of corruption and infidelity with a soldier. The prince
cut off communication with four of the five children from the marriage,
stripped them of their royal titles and diplomatic passports, and wrote
letters, since posted online by an exiled academic, to their British boarding
schools informing them that he would no longer pay their tuition. They now live
in the United States, as does their mother.
His third marriage, also to a commoner,
Srirasmi Suwadee, in 2001, produced the boy who is considered the next heir to
the throne, Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti, 11, who lives in Bavaria, Germany,
with his father.
Thais got a rare insight into the third
marriage when a video clip of an elaborate poolside birthday party circulated
widely on computer discs and on the internet. The video, which showed the
princess topless with a string bikini bottom being attended to by submissive
palace staff, scandalized a public accustomed to perceiving the monarchy as a
paragon of virtue.
It was never clear how the video had been
leaked but some suggested that the prince’s enemies had spread it to promote
the possibility that his sister, Princess Sirindhorn, beloved by the public for
her devotion to charitable causes, could become monarch in his stead.
The footage of the party was never publicly
discussed in Thailand’s news media.
The crown prince’s marriage to Ms. Srirasmi
blew up spectacularly in 2014, when members of her family were suddenly swept
up by the police, charged and brought to trial.
At least three of Ms. Srirasmi’s siblings
were sent to prison for crimes including illegal possession of firearms and
insulting the monarchy, according to police statements. Her mother and father
were sentenced to prison for insulting the monarchy.
Her uncle Pongpat Chayapan, a high-ranking
police officer, was convicted of running illegal casinos, oil smuggling, money
laundering and other crimes.
Ms. Srirasmi gave up her royally bestowed
name, according to an entry in The Royal Gazette, but she was given a stipend
of more than $5 million of government funds from the Crown Property Bureau, a
payment made public in a letter signed by the junta chief.
The purge reinforced fears of an ominous,
violent side in the prince’s entourage.
One of a handful of police officers purged in
the 2014 separation, Akkharawit Limrat, died under mysterious circumstances,
his body hastily cremated, according to a funeral certificate published in the
Thai news media.
The police, calling the matter “sensitive,”
gave only scant details.
Lt. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri, then the police
spokesman, described the death this way: “He got stressed out. So he jumped out
of the building and died.”
A separate purge last year of aides to the
crown prince had a similar outcome. Two of the three men arrested died in
custody in military barracks.
The purges have somewhat overshadowed recent
efforts by the government to rehabilitate the prince’s image, including
broadcasts of his riding in bicycle tours to celebrate the king and queen and
the release of a video showing him caring for his son Dipangkorn in Germany.
Critics said that after the purge of his third wife, those images sought to
present him as a healthy, responsible father.
The efforts suggested that the military had
cast its lot with the prince, trying to forge the same kind of mutually
beneficial alliance it had with his father. The king heads the armed forces and
must approve all governments, while the military draws its legitimacy from the
monarch’s blessing.
Then there’s the matter of who will be the
new queen. Like so many other parts of the crown prince’s life, the answer is
shrouded in secrecy.
A former flight attendant, Suthida
Vajiralongkorn na Ayudhaya, has appeared by the prince’s side on the official
royal broadcasts and has been bestowed the military rank of lieutenant general.
Kasit Piromya, a former foreign minister,
said he met Ms. Suthida many times when he was in government.
“She’s an air hostess, very lively, highly
intelligent,” he said. “She can ski, she can bike. She loves music. She knows
what is good wine in Italy.”
Ms. Suthida appears to live with the crown
prince in Bavaria.
Bild, the German tabloid, published a
photograph in July of the crown prince on an airport runway in low-slung jeans,
with what appeared to be tattoos covering his back and arms. The prince’s
companion, possibly Ms. Suthida, is wearing stiletto heels and a tight shirt,
midriff exposed, an outfit that might not raise eyebrows in Europe but would
disqualify any tourist from entering the Grand Palace in Bangkok.
The prince bought two villas in southern
Germany last year, one on the exclusive Lake Starnberg for an estimated $13
million, and another, said to have cost some $5.5 million, in the adjacent
community of Feldafing.
When Andreas Botas, a real estate agent in
Tutzing, showed the prince and his entourage a property there last year, three
black Mercedes vans, a white Porsche and three more vans arrived for the
appointment.
The driver of the Porsche turned out to be
the prince, “dressed in a skimpy T-shirt and jeans but very good shoes,” Mr.
Botas said. The prince looked carefully at the villa’s 12 main rooms as
servants lay prostrate or knelt on the ground ready to start the white Porsche
and open the driver and passenger doors. Ultimately, Mr. Botas said, the prince
bought the other villas.
Bavaria offers the crown prince the privacy
that he appears to crave. In Tutzing, the Prince’s three-story villa is
defended from prying eyes by a fence and hedge more than six-feet tall.
In Feldafing, few locals seem to know the
prince, but neighbors said they heard parties around the private pool late into
the night last summer.
Occasional public appearances sometimes make
news in the German and Austrian news media. The crown prince’s entourage, they
reported, has visited a pumpkin farm, picked strawberries, and toured parts of
Bavaria on mountain bikes. In the Austrian ski resort of Zell am Ziller, the
prince’s entourage in 2014 rented 70 rooms in a spa hotel and demanded the
installation of a kitchen where the prince’s own cook prepared his food,
according to an article in the Innsbruck newspaper Tiroler Tageszeitung.
But for the most part, this community
shelters its wealthy residents with discreet propriety.
The deputy mayor of Tutzing, Elisabeth
Dörrenberg, said only that her community of some 10,000 welcomed wealthy and
prominent people, but said nothing specifically about the prince. The town does
not show off its wealth; there is no five-star hotel or Michelin-starred
restaurant.
The mayor of Feldafing, Bernhard Sontheim,
was equally reticent. The prince’s entourage showed up at his office in July,
the mayor said, and spent half an hour chatting about generalities.
The prince, he said, “is now a resident of
Feldafing, he lives here and that is that.”
Follow Alison Smale @asmalenyt and Thomas
Fuller @thomasfullerNYT on Twitter.
Alison Smale reported from Tutzing, Germany,
and Thomas Fuller from San Francisco. Victor Homola contributed reporting from
Berlin.
