Updated: Thanin’s dead

Thanin Kraivixien, unelected prime minister from 1976 to 1977, and rewarded with a position on the Privy Council by a grateful king, finally died, aged 97.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra startled us by not just expressing her condolences but apparently stating that the widely hated Thanin was “one of the country’s most revered prime ministers” and “one of the most important people in Thai society.”

Naturally enough, the extreme rightist will get a royally sponsored funeral.

Thanin, a judge, was nominated and appointed on 8 October 1976 by King Bhumibhol and served him. His government was established following the 6 October massacre and a military coup. His task was to turn back the political clock and established a 12 year plan to do this. He banned all kinds of things, burned books, and oversaw a political crackdown that led to thousands fleeing to jungles and overseas. In presiding over this extreme repression, even the military leadership found he was damaging the military-monarchy brand.

He will not be missed, except by ultra-royalists and other rightists.

Interestingly, from an old Facebook post, Sulak Sivaraksa remembered Thanin as an astrologer. He adds that Thanin “ruled the country in the worst way, even though he claimed that he was like a shell of a clam, with an army as his shell. But then the army couldn’t stand him and he was removed from the position.”

And, he adds this important observation: “Now that the country has changed, they still honor someone like Thanin Kraivichien. It shows that the Thai ruling class has no sense of the Thai people who were humiliated and abused on October 6, 1976.”

Update: The following short note is attributed to Alan Dawson:

Tanin Kraivixien, who ordered the killing of a detained Lao ‘heroin-drug lord’ to try to impress a visiting U.S. congressman Lester Wolff of New York, died Sunday, aged 97.

He was appointed premier by members of the October, 1976, military coup but only lasted about a year in office.
Incompetent as prime minister but hard-core rightist to the soul, he ordered the public burning of all 45,000 books that police could find by Thomas More, George Orwell, and Maxim Gorky.

He was the first prime minister in modern Thailand with a foreign wife, Khunying Karen [PPT: also reported to have been an astrologer]; they had five luke krueng kiddies.