May 7, 2009Tribune Magazine (UK)
Thailand’s monarchy is an affront to democracy. James Anstruther reports on how King Bhumibol Adulyadej crushes all dissent
THE King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, is apparently thinking about going on a state visit to India. This is unusual, as the 82-year-old monarch largely gave up on such foreign trips in the 1960s. Even before then, he only went to see allies who would be useful in the Cold War fight against the left. Thus, while he visited South Vietnam in 1959, he has never been to North Vietnam or even Thailand’s neighbours, Laos and Cambodia.
He is understood to feel that his dharma-raja, or kingly virtue, is required at home to protect his kingdom from unseemly division and tribulation – such as the political crisis that has been played out on the streets of Bangkok for the past three years. But he could be about to make an exception for India, which he previously shunned because of its left-wing politics and friendship with the Soviet Union.
It is from India that Bhumibol’s kingly virtue derives. He is regarded by his supporters as a personification of the Hindu god Narayana (an avatar of Vishnu). The Hindu tradition is overlaid on an otherwise Buddhist monarchy.
And there is much need of the king’s dharma at home. After all, there have been frequent coups since Bhumibol ascended the throne in 1946 following the death from gunshot wounds of his brother, who had been king for just three months. Bhumibol, who in common with many Thais is very keen on firearms, was in the palace at the time, but has never been publicly blamed for the shooting.
Not all of the coups since his accession have had the king’s approval. However, the most recent one, in September 2006 against Thaksin Shinawatra, the country’s only genuinely elected prime minister, most definitely did.
The king is usually described in Thailand as a constitutional monarch, but there have been 17 written constitutions since the supposed end of absolute monarchy in 1932. These constitutions usually specify a parliamentary system, but some have required a military dictatorship. But they all feature the semi-divine nature of the king and all include provisions for lèse-majesté – a ban on insulting or even criticising the monarch, his immediate family or the institution itself.
In recent years, it has never been the king himself who institutes lèse-majesté proceedings, as this can safely be left to politicians, generals or even members of the public. The accusations come in vast numbers and the police are required to investigate all such tip-offs, however petty they may seem. The minimum sentence is three years in prison. While only those cases featuring unfortunate foreigners are widely reported abroad, jail sentences for Thai citizens committing lèse-majesté are usually harsher than those for foreigners.
Bhumibol was born in the United States while his father was studying at Harvard. He spent the Second World War at school in Switzerland. To act as his latest prime minister he has turned to another foreign-born Thai, the 44-year-old Abhisit Vejjajiva, the son of a Wallsend doctor. Abhisit, who was educated at Eton and Oxford, is apparently a good friend of Boris Johnson – although it is difficult to say which of the two has more to be ashamed of here.
Thaksin, the prime minister overthrown by the last coup, was the country’s first modern politician. He actually went campaigning for votes rather than politicking in Bangkok drawing rooms. His was the only government ever to have had an absolute majority in parliament, and it brought in a series of highly popular measures to alleviate rural poverty. Thaksin set up the country’s first universal healthcare programme.
A former policeman who had become a billionaire businessman, Thaksin has a little reminiscent of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi about him and his policies were not always well thought-through. His highly confrontational actions against Muslim separatists in four southern provinces, along with a violent and unrestrained anti-drugs campaign, led to many avoidable deaths. But he was hugely popular in the countryside, with his triumphant re-election in 2005 attracting the highest voter turnout in Thai history.
It was not his policies that led to Thaksin’s downfall. In fact, it was his very popularity that sealed his doom. As he could not be beaten at the polls, a coup was only way to get rid of him. The generals accused him of corruption and, of course, lèse-majesté. His travels around the country in search of votes were making him popular. And being popular was the role of the king, not a politician, a mere commoner and particularly not of someone with Chinese blood. This meant he wanted to overthrow the king and set up a republic – or so it was claimed.
The generals ruled by themselves for more than a year, before establishing yet another constitution and holding new elections. They banned Thaksin’s party, but its successor grouping still managed to win.
The new government was under persistent attack from far-right royalist thugs and was harried from pillar to post. Eventually, a few of its parliamentary supporters were bought off. Reports suggest that some of them might have received payments of $3 million each to switch sides. And so Abhisit, the 44-year-old Old Etonian, was appointed premier. The party he leads, the Democrats, is Thailand’s oldest, having been established in 1946 to champion the cause of Thai royalty.
Since the coup, Thaksin has been on the run from Thai prosecutors and their army backers, who have convicted him in his absence. Nominally because of that conviction, he was banned from visiting Britain after the Thais applied diplomatic pressure. What, you might ask, was the concept of political asylum invented for?
Thaksin, who now travels on a Nicaraguan diplomatic passport, has been seen in places such as Hong Kong and Dubai, from where he speaks by video-link to vast crowds of his Thai supporters, who are demanding fresh elections to choose a government with a genuinely popular mandate.
They are unlikely get these elections until the present government finds some way of preventing Thaksin’s allies from winning. Meanwhile, the supposedly pro-business Democrat regime presides over a downward economic spiral.
But the elderly king cannot last forever. Might his successor usher in a new era of calm, democracy and prosperity? That is very unlikely. Like so many of the Thai elite, the heir to the throne, the thuggish Vajiralongkorn, now aged 56, went to a fee-charging school in England – Millfield, which has “non-academic” selection criteria.
He is loathed and feared throughout Thailand – although he, too, is covered by the lèse-majesté laws. He is going to need them.
James Anstruther is a journalist who worked in Thailand until recently. This is an assumed name
