All about the monarchy

Self-crowned

At the moment, while the Puea Thai Party-led coalition wants news to be about millions of tourism, the news is all about Article 112 as the proxy for the feudal monarchy.

The Move Forward Party is probably about to be dissolved by the Constitutional Court, although there’s an ever so slim chance that the establishment might worry about a political reaction similar to that when Future Forward was done away with.

That the case against the party is ludicrously mad, even for the politicized and ultra-royalist court and its bosses, is simply a demonstration of the great fear of the establishment, having grafted feudalist notions of royal rule to its quest for wealth and power.

The there’s the case against Thaksin Shinwatra, the Puea Thai Party’s boss. He and the party are desperately seeking a way out of the lese majeste case being brought against him for comments made about the 2014 military coup and the role of the palace.

Most recently, Thaksin has been saying that the case is political.

Of course it is. All Article 112 are political.

Thaksin “has made a renewed plea to the attorney-general to reconsider a lèse majesté charge against him.”In this plea, “Thaksin argues that the original investigation was compromised. He claims that the committee, led by former Attorney-General Trakul Winitchaipark, acted under the influence of the military junta that was in power at the time.”

Of course it did, but anyone who looks at the statistics on lese majeste cases soon notices that that junta and it reincarnations over almost a decade used lese majeste for political repression, all in the name of “protecting” a flawed monarch.

During a visit to Pathum Thani, Thaksin “told reporters that he was unfairly accused by an investigation tainted by bias. Describing the charge as the ‘fruit of a toxic tree,’ he emphasised that the officers involved were not independent.”

We doubt Thaksin can see far beyond his own travails, as evidenced by his earlier deal to get into bed with the political representatives of the military-monarchy alliance. Yet it is that alliance that is responsible for quite a few coups (including two against the Shinawatra clan) and other political interventions over two reigns has so monopolized political power that the call for reform is louder than ever. That alliance has undermined the ruling regime it has sought to foster.

In recent days the self-inflicted weakness of the regime has been on display. Its weakness is the reliance on the military-monarchy alliance. Unable to do anything much at the ballot box, the resort is to the violence of lese majeste and the military’s power to intervene in politics.

Thaksin seems to want another personalized deal. But residual anti-Thaksinists are resisting. Indeed, these rightist are calling for the military to reassert itself. The “Network of Students and People Reforming Thailand and Thai People Protecting the Monarchy groups marched to the army headquarters on Tuesday, where they submitted a petition” calling for the the army to oppose bail for Thaksin.

These ultra-royalists know that feudalism is about power, intervention, and repression and, unable to win elections, that the only way to defeat reform is to get rid of this government and to return to military or military-backed government working for the monarchy.