Further updated: The military king

New Mandala has a podcast about Supalak Ganjanakhundee’s excellent new book A Soldier King.

In the podcast, Duncan McCargo of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies discusses the book and the monarchy with Supalak.

A Soldier King: Monarchy and Military in the Thailand of Rama X is available from the publisher, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a reasonable SGD 27.71.

Update 1: Prachatai also discusses the book.

Update 2: A reader suggested we add the graphic from the Prachatai story. We agree, it is worth recording and knowing who the dinosaurs are:

Reform to revolution

From Destination Justice

These days, New Mandala publishes far less on Thailand than it once did. When it does manage something on Thailand, sometimes these are noteworthy contributions. Its latest offering, “The network origin of the Thai youth revolution,” by Akanit Horatanakun, is worth considering.

While PPT’s ventures into the rallies suggest that it’s not all youth, it is true that these brave young activists are the driving force in the “revolution.”

With Thalugas reactivating in recent days, it is worth considering Akanit’s contribution, despite some of the graduate student language.

Recent writing on protest, monarchy, and law

PPT wants to draw attention to two recent works by academics that should get some attention.

The first is “Thai Youth Movements in Comparison: White Ribbons in 2020 and Din Daeng in 2021” by Chulalongkorn University political scientist Kanokrat Lertchoosakul. One reason for reading it is that it is from New Mandala. Once once mighty source of debate on Thailand, New Mandala has dropped off in recent years and is all too tame these days. Another reason for reading it  is that the article offers consideration of different political strategies that include a move away from non-violent protest. While we wonder about the (middle-class academic) notion of “the power of individuals to create change,” the discussion offers a nuanced account. It concludes: “In spite of differences in socio-economic status, political demands and protest strategies, the two groups have several features in common. They are politically active citizens and stand in support of political freedom and social justice.”

The second work is harder to access. A pricey new book, with an altogether too fancy title, is available. Constitutional Bricolage. Thailand’s Sacred Monarchy vs. The Rule of Law is by Eugénie Mérieau who is an Associate Professor of Public Law at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. An extract from the book is available. The publisher’s blurb states:

This book analyses the unique constitutional system in operation in Thailand as a continuous process of bricolage between various Western constitutional models and Buddhist doctrines of Kingship. Reflecting on the category of ‘constitutional monarchy’ and its relationship with notions of the rule of law, it investigates the hybridised semi-authoritarian, semi-liberal monarchy that exists in Thailand.

By studying constitutional texts and political practices in light of local legal doctrine, the book shows that the monarch’s affirmation of extraordinary prerogative powers strongly rests on wider doctrinal claims about constitutionalism and the rule of law. This finding challenges commonly accepted assertions about Thailand, arguing that the King’s political role is not the remnant of the ‘unfinished’ borrowing of Western constitutionalism, general disregard for the law, or cultural preference for ‘charismatic authority’, as generally thought.

Drawing on materials and sources not previously available in English, this important work provides a comprehensive and critical account of the Thai ‘mixed constitutional monarchy’ from the late 19th century to the present day.

Based on this, the extract and the table of contents, this looks like a serious piece of scholarship.

Updated: Birthday games I

While youth protesters keep poking at the regime and monarchy, the regime spent time “honoring” the absent king.

Where is Wanchalearm? Clipped from Prachatai

Meanwhile, in Europe, the king’s 68th birthday was marked by protest and critical and quizzical media reports (see here and here).

In Thailand, the regime ordered displays of loyalty (as it usually does on the birthdays of kings) and most of the response was state-led, with companies spending budget on “adverts” that “honor” the king.  The media all come up with boring headers for the king. All levels of government are required to organize events and dragooning the public to “participate.”

The Dictator took a particularly high profile. The Guardian produced a photo that says rather too much about “loyalty” and absence.

“Sanam Luang, Thailand The Thai prime minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha, (centre) and officials have their photo taken in front of a large portrait of the Thai King … Vajiralongkorn … during celebrations for the monarch’s 68th birthday in Bangkok (Photograph: Diego Azubel/EPA).” Clipped from The Guardian.

Meanwhile, New Mandala has an anonymous post that summarizes much of what is known about the king. It is unclear why the author undervalues the Crown Property Bureau’s wealth or what causes the author to think that the king distrusts the military and that this distrust is cause for him to remain in Germany.

The author’s claim that “there are small grounds to hope that, if the king is confident that he has achieved his security and royal asset reclamation goals, he could return to Thailand and reign as a constitutional monarch” seems about as misplaced as earlier claims that Vajiralongkorn would “foster a somewhat more open political atmosphere…”.

Vajiralongkorn is erratic, prone to fits of anger, vindictive and narcissistic. He is widely disliked and feared.

Update: On the king being an absentee landlord and monarch, see Ji Ungpakorn’s post on the issue.

Updated: Prem dead I

The grand old meddler in Thailand’s politics, from the 1980s to recent times, Gen Prem Tinsulanonda is dead, aged 98.

We expect the buffalo manure to be piled high for him as royalists and lazy commentators recall his time in power as an unelected premier as somehow better than now. In fact, Thailand’s politics seems strangely locked in the 1980s, and that’s largely due to Prem and his political and military meddling, promoting lapdogs and loyalists and refusing to accept the will of the people as expressed in elections. Others will not look beyond his “loyalty” to the throne where it must be acknowledged that he did much to promote the palace’s political role.

Update: Readers might like to reflect on Prem’s period as unelected premier. While not a great scan, Gareth McKinley’s 1984 discussion of a coup attempt is useful, with information on lese majeste and the monarchy’s political role. There’s an op-ed from The Nation (3 May 1988) “Prem’s rules of the game: A 1988 guide for laymen” which pokes fun at his leadership “style.”

And it is worth remembering how Prem was forced out in 1988 and “rescued” by the king, also from The Nation, when it produced an Afternoon Extra, from 28 August 1988:

On his 2006 coup role, WikiLeaks was useful. He also supported the 2014 coup, and New Mandala also commented. The BBC produced a profile in 2016, without too many of his warts. One of PPT’s most viewed posts “A country for old men?” is probably worth reading again.

Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia

New Mandala has posted a series of videos from a recent conference on Entrenched Illiberalism in Mainland Southeast Asia,” recorded at the Australian National University on 8–9 April 2019.

Coming a couple of weeks after Thailand’s “election,” means that there’s something of a focus on that country. Thai participants included Sunai Pasuk, Pasuk Phongpaichit, Aim Sinpeng, Prajak Kongkirati, and Naruemon Thabchumpon.

Corrupting the judicial system

We recommend Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang’s recent blog at New Mandala titled “Corrupting Thailand’s Court of Justice.” It begins:

A coup cannot be carried out by the military alone. In Thailand’s case, watchdog agencies and the judiciary helped not only to pave the way for the most recent coups in 2006 and 2014, they also contributed to sustaining the ensuing regimes. Some, like the National Anti-Corruption Commission, refuse to investigate the junta’s corruption scandals even while pursuing those of its foes. Others, like the courts, punish dissent to keep opposition at bay. The junta has returned the favour with promotions, salary increases and other perks.

All of that makes the whole article worthy of a solid reading.

A triple threat?

Academic Nicholas Farrelly, who runs New Mandala, has produced a report for Australia’s Lowy Institute, sometimes described as a “think tank.”

Quite a lot of the Thailand commentary at Lowy has been bland and not particularly analytical, but Thailand’s Triple Threat (only three?) deserves a reading. The abstract is:

King Vajiralongkorn’s elevation to the Chakri throne comes after decades of whispers that he is an unsuitable king for Thailand. Despite these concerns, the military leadership has swung behind their new monarch. But the potential for future turbulence under the government led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha is high. The fluid situation in Bangkok is complicated by the potential escalation and expansion of separatist violence in southern Thailand. The question is how will Thailand respond to the triple threat of King Vajiralongkorn’s ascension, the entrenchment of military rule, and the potential escalation of separatist violence emanating from the southern provinces?

The most likely future for Thailand is one in which the authoritarian instincts of the military and the monarchy reinforce their mutual survival pact. Nevertheless, at the core of Thailand’s triple threat is the possibility that the untested nexus between the new king and the powerbrokers in the military will prove insufficiently strong. Even if everything goes according to plan, today’s authoritarian establishment in Bangkok risks inspiring new challengers to its interests. And if everything goes bad at the same time, Thailand would struggle to maintain its position as one of Southeast Asia’s most successful societies.

Banning a tabloid

Prachatai reports that “[w]ithout any explanation, Thailand has blocked access to the New York Post.” The tabloid seems an unlikely newspaper to censor as it usually only carries stories that are somewhat kooky, titillate or shock.

The speculation is that the tabloid carried stories on the monarchy that were disliked by either the palace, the king, royalist snitches or some civil or military bureaucrat who stumbled upon them when linking to salacious articles about murderous threesomes of a beauty queen eating pizza (both recent articles).

So we thought we’d search the site to see what they had on Thailand. The most recent stories are of a bear “dropped” from a helicopter and the coin consuming turtle. Then there’s stuff about a python biting a man’s penis as it slithered out of a toilet and the monks breeding tigers. None of this seemed likely to exercise the internet censors or cyber vigilantes.

Back in 2016, there was a story a bit like the one that caused a kerfuffle and denials about Pattaya’s sex trade, “Inside the Thai sex scene — where women are sold like meat.” Perhaps that got some attention. Or maybe a related story bothered a do-gooder, “Gangs of transsexual sex workers are attacking tourists in Thailand.” Yet that is also from 2016.

What about royal stories? We found these, and in feudal-wannabe-absolutist Thailand under the military dictatorship, any of them could have caused censors to spring into action, even if all of them are months old and some are from wire services.

One on the death of the last king seems unlikely to cause offense: Thailand’s king, world’s longest-serving monarch, dies at 88. Another story we found in our search of the period since early 2016 was headlined Thailand prepares to welcome its new kooky king, which, apart from the headline, is a standard report on succession.

It is possible that articles on the prince who is now king might be a reason for censorship. The first story, Thailand’s new king is a kooky crop top-wearing playboy, reproduces the infamous temporary tattoo photos from Munich airport, and has some interesting detail, any line of which may have caused consternation in a palace and regime that wants a more santitized “history”:

… the playboy prince has a reputation among his soon-to-be subjects for bizarre behavior, womanizing and cruelty to his many wives.

Taking a page from Caligula, Vajiralongkorn named his favorite pet, a poodle named Foo Foo, as an air marshal.

He even took the pooch to a 2007 reception hosted in his honor by US Ambassador Ralph “Skip” Boyce.

“Foo Foo was . . . dressed in formal evening attire complete with paw mitts, and at one point during the band’s second number, he jumped up onto the head table and began lapping from the guests’ water glasses,” Boyce wrote, according to a WikiLeaks document.

“The Air Chief Marshal’s antics . . . remains the talk of the town to this day.”

But tales of the prince’s behavior exist mostly in the realm of rumor in Thailand. The nation has strict laws banning stories about the royal family.

But in 2007, the depravity of Vajiralongkorn’s court was exposed when a video surfaced of his third wife, Princess Srirasmi, a former bar waitress, walking around topless at her own birthday party while eating cake with Foo Foo.

When the dog died last year, it was given a four-day funeral.

Srirasmi has split from the prince after being booted from the Royal Palace in December. In a show of his cruelty, he recently allowed her parents to be thrown in prison for 2¹/₂ years for “royal defamation.”

His earlier two marriages were equally rocky. During his first — to his cousin — he allegedly fathered five kids with a mistress, then married the mistress. Later he dumped her, forcing her to flee the country.

Another story, Thailand’s new king used his poodle to spite his father, could also cause the censorship, beginning with this:

Family relations were a royal bitch for Thailand’s clown prince.

The country’s kooky crop top-sporting playboy prince adopted Foo Foo, the pampered poodle he famously named as an air marshal — all to spite his father, according to a report.

This report cites a 2015 New Mandala story by Christine Gray, commenting on a lese majeste case.

The New York Post also has an article on lese majeste, This is what happens when you insult the new Thai king. This story features video of a “woman accused of insulting the kooky crown prince of Thailand was publicly humiliated and forced to grovel beneath a portrait of the country’s late king,” during the early mourning period for the late king.

If Thailand’s “authorities” are trying to concoct a new hagiographical account of the tenth king, then the internet censors have a huge task ahead of them.

Recent publications of interest

As long-time readers know, we at PPT sometimes draw attention to works on Thailand by academics. In recent days there have been a few worthy of attention, each published in an easily accessible form:

The first is a New Mandala piece by Jim Taylor: “The perplexing case of Wat Dhammakaya.”

Taylor made a name for himself in the 1980s and 1990s writing on this group, so this piece is worth a read as the military regime and the monarchy try to bring it down.

Then there are a set of articles at the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asian Studies. The papers of Thailand interest in an issue on “Political Assassinations in Southeast Asia” are:

• Prajak Kongkirati: Murder without Progress in Siam: From Hired Gunmen to Men in Uniform
• Nuttakorn Vititanon: Assassination in Thai Local Politics: A Decade of Decentralisation (2000-2009)
• Peera Charoenvattananukul: Rethinking Approaches to the Study of Thai Foreign Policy Behaviours

The issue includes articles on political violence in other parts of Southeast Asia.