The trouble with the king
From The Economist print edition
Nobody can say it in public, but the Thai monarchy, invisible during the latest crisis, is at its heart
SOMETHING of a hopeful trajectory was implied in The Economist’s report on the Friday coup of 1932. As Latin American countries replaced one junta with another, and as fascists moved Japan towards tyranny, our correspondent wrote (see article): “The Siamese revolutionaries are moving in the opposite direction—from absolute monarchy towards self-government.” Seizing power with no loss of life, a group of Westernised military officers had arrested the heir to the throne and the chief of police. The king had little choice but to accept the fait accompli: power was henceforth to devolve from an absolute monarchy to a parliamentary constitution. The feudal era was over. If the correspondent had in mind something like the Dutch monarchy off shopping on their bicycles, in Thailand that vision got hijacked on the way to the supermarket. Today King Bhumibol Adulyadej, at 81 the world’s longest-reigning monarch, has actually accrued power over the years, and remains central to Thailand’s political chaos. This helps explain one bizarre episode among many in the country’s latest crisis. At a time when large-scale bloodshed seemed possible as the army confronted anti-government “red shirt” protesters in Bangkok, Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister deposed in a coup in 2006, gave a television interview. His voice quaking with emotion, and doubtless recalling the king’s famous televised carpeting of an army chief and a protest leader after a massacre in Bangkok in 1992, he beseeched “his majesty” to intervene again to end the showdown.
Yet Mr Thaksin, in exile and convicted in absentia of corruption, is accused by his opponents of being a closet republican. And he has indeed come close to criticising the palace, by demanding the resignation of two of the king’s privy councillors, widely assumed to be behind the 2006 coup. When “yellow shirt” protesters laid siege to the government led by Mr Thaksin’s loyalists late last year, they did so invoking the king’s name. Yet now even Mr Thaksin felt obliged to profess again his loyalty to the king, and to pay homage to his power.
Such regal influence was far from preordained when the king came to the throne as a stripling, the American-born son of a half-Chinese commoner. He and his image were moulded by palace advisers and by successive military governments. They saw how useful it would be to have a figurehead depicted as not merely beyond reproach but very nearly divine, for the king’s blessing could then legitimise what otherwise would look awfully like any old Latin American junta, in Thailand’s case backed by business cronies and the Bangkok elite. The need helps explain why a king held supposedly in wonder by his subjects warrants one of the world’s most draconian laws against lèse-majesté. The king has been not just a figurehead for Thailand’s elites, but a source of patronage and power in his own right, with destabilising consequences, especially now his reign is in its fumbling twilight. He has long bestowed honours in exchange for donations to his good causes. The causes may benefit his beloved rural poor, but the patronage system perpetuates royal influence.
Mr Thaksin’s innovation was to use the impressively democratic constitution Thailand adopted in 1997 to invent a new politics that transformed the old system of retail, local, vote-buying into a wholesale machine that spread patronage nationwide. Policies of universal health care, microcredit and the like only strengthened the machine. Thus Mr Thaksin became the only prime minister in Thailand’s fitful democratic history to serve out his full term. But the old elite felt threatened as his autocratic leadership and popularity seemed to challenge the king’s authority.
Thai culture blends Buddhism, spirit beliefs and rampant materialism. Power and potency come in many fluid forms. But as Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly of Australian National University put it, Thailand’s elite is less conceptually adroit, calculating power in zero-sum terms. The junta that ousted Mr Thaksin claimed his policies flouted the king’s notions of a “sufficiency economy”, rooted in traditional notions of harmonious village life and perfect hierarchy, which they then incorporated into a new constitution. The junta, quickly making a mess of governing, allowed an election. But convenient court rulings helped bring down two successive pro-Thaksin governments.
Abhisit’s chance
Mr Thaksin’s wealth has been impounded. And his call, at the height of the crisis, for a revolution is now viewed by many Thais as criminally irresponsible. So Mr Thaksin is on the back foot. But the monarchy may be in deeper trouble. Some red shirts this week lamented that, if King Bhumibol is against the leader they keep voting for, he must be against them too. The king is old and frail. His successor, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn—spoilt, oft-wed and demanding—is much disliked. The monarchy’s carefully fostered image could crumble overnight.
Protecting it is partly the task of Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thailand’s present prime minister. He rode to office, unelected, thanks to the yellow shirts. Mr Abhisit says he is a reformer, who will heal divisions. He handled the red-shirt chaos with firm restraint. The king, it is said, has taken rather a shine to the 44-year-old, schooled at Eton and Oxford. Our correspondent in 1932 would have put him firmly among the “rather exotic Westernised intelligentsia” in the post-coup government. He would doubtless have relished the paradox that such an urbane, cosmopolitan figure is now the front for a regime that in essence owes its power to a feudal monarchy. Mr Abhisit lacks both influence and legitimacy. To earn both, he will need to face the voters. Indebted to the royalists who brought him to power, he is unlikely to encourage debate on the monarchy’s future. But if he did so, Thailand and perhaps the royal family itself would have reason to thank him in the long run. In its present role, the monarchy is standing between Thailand and not just political harmony, but modernity itself.
