Moneyed monarch

From the Guinness book:

After the king, who are Thailand’s richest?

As usual, Forbes list of Thailand’s richest leaves off the king and royal family. However, they usually include them in the richest royals list out later in the year.

This year’s richest list generally sees the richest getting richer. As Forbes observes:

For a country seen by some outsiders to be beset by political turmoil and rural insurgency, never mind last fall’s calamitous flooding, Thailand has done remarkably well by its richest. Their collective wealth is up by better than 20% for a second straight year….

Many of Thailand’s wealthiest are looking to take on international rivals, on the strength of an expected 6% growth in the Thai economy this year.

The list of Thailand’s richest is here. The wealthiest is Dhanin Chearavanont who “boasts an estimated net worth of $9 billion.” He’s followed by the Chirathivat family with $6.9 billion, Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi worth $6.2 billion, the Yoovidhya family with $5.4 billion, Krit Ratanarak with $3.1 billion, the Bhirombhakdi family with $2.4 billion and the Maleenont family worth $1.8 billion. Quite a few royalists and Democrat Party supporters amongst this lot.

If the wealth of the top ten in the Forbes list is combined, then the total comes out roughly the same as the assets of the Crown Property Bureau.

 

Updated: Money, antiques and prince

This will not be a public story in Thailand because of the fear journalists have about lese majeste. That’s even when the story is just about a bit of overseas shopping by the eldest son of the Thai king and heir apparent.

Both the The Telegraph and a local website in Hampshire, England, have stories of a small buying spree by Prince Vajiralongkorn and his consort. And his request for cream tea.

The White Lion Antique Centre in Hartley Wintney was closed to the public as Vajiralongkorn and Srirasmi had their scones and bought a bit of the store’s inventory. The story states the couple bought  “300 items of bone china.” That’s be just a bit of change for the scion of the world’s richest monarchy.

Apparently, the “prince and his staff had flown into nearby Farnborough in a private 737 jet on June 20 for a holiday in the UK and had chosen the shop because it also served his favourite scones, strawberry jam and cream teas.”

Of course, it remains to be confirmed that the 737 is a “private” plane. Whatever happened to that German story? Our posts on that kerfuffle began with this post on 13 July 2011 and continued almost daily (here, here, here, here, here and here). Then there were other posts (here and here) that came to an end around 10 August 2010.

The shop’s owner, Mahoney said: ” It was a great honour to have him visit us…. It is a massive thing to have someone from a royal family visit a little provincial shop like ours. They seemed very pleased with what they bought.”

The Telegraph adds that the prince:

has a reputation for living a playboy lifestyle. He was at the centre of a scandal in 2009 when an Australian TV channel obtained a video of a lavish birthday party he had thrown for his miniature poodle Foo Foo, at which Princess Srirasmi appeared wearing little more than a G-string.

From This is Hampshire

At the website This is Hampshire, the story is much the same, noting that the royal couple had “an entourage of more than 30 … and spent several thousands of pounds during a four-hour stay.” It adds that he “arrived in a Mercedes with his wife, the Princess Consort Srirasmi, along with Ambassador of Thailand, Kitti Wasinondh.” Private holiday or official visit, the flunkies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are required to slither about.

It adds that it was Vajiralongkorn who “requested The White Lion Antiques Centre shut to the public on June 20 so he could have the space entirely to himself.” The report states that the prince “had around 15 security guards who arrived beforehand.”

Apparently the 300 items of fine china were “to add to their collection…”. As one PPT reader stated, “This is the sufficiency economy in the 21st century.” In fact, as the royalists will tell us, the prince can afford a bit of crockery, so this is “sufficiency.” Just spending a bit of loose change.

Update: A reader points out that the prince’s visit coincides with the Farnborough Air Show, where:

Sikorsky today announced that the Royal Thai Army has signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) to acquire two UH-60M BLACK HAWK helicopters through the United States Government’s Foreign Military Sales channel. Upon delivery, Thailand will become the first member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to fly the very latest version of the BLACK HAWK helicopter operated by the U.S. Army.

The monarchy’s wealth (denied, again)

A letter to the New York Times proves the strength of the royalist desire to “protect” a monarchy. A month after the original article, prompted by the seizure of a Boeing 737 in Munich, Arjaree Sriratanaban, Minister Counselor at the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington D.C. has responded in a remarkable statement that is obviously disingenuous.

The original article, by Thomas Fuller, used the seizing of the plane – which the then Abhisit Vejjajiva government claimed “belonged” to Prince Vajiralongkorn, raised questions regarding the remarkably opaque nature of royal finances and financing.

Arjaree claims ” the Thai side considered this impoundment a grave error based upon a misunderstanding that the aircraft is an asset of the Thai government and not privately owned by the crown prince.” In simple terms, the plane is the prince’s personal property. That is somehow transitioned from a state asset to a private asset is not addressed.

The letter then turns to “[t]he notion” that the “king of Thailand is the world’s richest monarch.” It states that this “needs to be reassessed.” Why?

Simply because Forbes magazine’s calculation of the world’s richest royals “included assets belonging to the Crown Property Bureau that are held in trust for the nation and not at the king’s personal disposal.”

The letter claims:

it should also be noted that Thailand’s 1948 Crown Property Bureau Act provides the legal framework for clearly differentiating the Crown Property Bureau’s assets from the personal properties of the reigning monarch. It is the duty of the C.P.B. under this act to administer the assets under its board of directors chaired ex officio by the minister of finance. Most importantly, the C.P.B. has been striving for a balance between the financial and social outcomes of its activities to benefit all of its stakeholders, letting out much of its property with rents below market levels.

This is simply a repetition of palace propaganda. PPT realizes that even having to trot this propaganda out must give the CPB officials heartburn. After all, it is only since the 2006 coup that there has been wider public attention to royal wealth. For another claim that “the king is not rich,” see here.

As we noted in our earlier post:

… the lack of transparency and control of the CPB by the monarch is associated with the current reign. The opaque management and operation of the CPB is becoming a serious issue, and it scares those who manage the CPB so much that they have taken baby steps to trying to appear more transparent. As Fuller says, “Much remains unknown about the bureau’s assets.” In fact, his statement is weak; almost nothing significant is known.

He notes that, in 2008, Forbes magazine “ranked the Thai king as the world’s richest royal, the Thai government strongly protested, saying the magazine had conflated the king’s personal wealth with assets managed by the bureau.” As others have pointed out, this is a nonsensical response. Only the crown controls the CPB and no recent government has ever sought to change this situation.

Fuller adds that income from the CPB “is separate from the approximately $350 million in taxpayer money allocated for the royal household, royal-led development projects and other expenses related to the royal family.“

There is sufficient academic and other commentary on the CPB to prove the inaccuracy of the propaganda. In another post, PPT referred to lese majeste defendant Somsak Jeamteerasakul who reacted to the Crown Property Bureau’s first public annual report. The original post was at Prachatai. We said:

This is a long post and worth reading in full. In short, Somsak takes up the CPB’s claim that “Crown property is state property and public property, for which the government through the Minister of Finance as the Chairperson is responsible, and which the CPB takes care of.”

Somsak says this “statement is not true, de jure and de facto.” He later concludes, following a listing of legal interpretations, that “the 2010 CPB Annual Report is an attempt to distort…”, adding: “That crown property and the Crown Property Bureau fall under the exclusive oversight of the King (and are accountable to no one else) is a fact known for a long time in all sectors, business or government, and even in public. It is therefore incredible that the 2010 CPB Annual Report tries to distort the fact by saying that CPB is under the ‘responsibility’ of the government.”

Of course, as Somsak points out, this CPB sleight of hand is to deflect attention away from the vast wealth controlled by the monarch and to obscure the fact that in most modern monarchies, crown property is state property. In Thailand, it is the king’s property. PPT might add that this is a politically-motivated statement, seeking to deflect the criticism that is made of this obscenely rich royal family.

PPT would add that the Arjaree’s comment on what is “Most important…” – its low rents, is right out of the palace’s playbook. The problem is that it doesn’t even match what the CPB itself states in its Annual Report: ”

2) Rent Rationalization – contract renewals for most tenants take place every three years; the CPB takes this opportunity to adjust rents so that they are aligned with others in the same community but always after carefully considering tenants’ capacity to pay.

And here is what academic Porphant Ouyyanont says in his Journal of Contemporary Asia article in 2008:

To manage its landed properties, CPB set up another new entity called CPB Property Company (Wang Sinsup in Thai) in 2000. Again new executives were hired, headed by Yos Euarchukiati, member of a prominent banking and industrial family, and including people with experience in finance and real estate….

The management of the CPB’s property portfolio was also restructured and reorientated to become more commercial and aggressive. The initial aim was simply to increase the cashflow as rapidly as possible. Private tenancies were renegotiated on an individual basis and, shortly after the [1997-98] crisis….

Porphant shows how rents were increased substantially, for almost all kinds of property, following the economic crisis. For a time, income from property was higher than the usual giants of the CPB portfolio, the Siam Cement Group and the Siam Commercial Bank.

Arjaree Sriratanaban has acted several times as MFA mouthpiece. As examples, see the letter to the Bangkok Post in 2010 and a statement in The Nation in 2006. It may seem remarkable that Thai officials are willing to put their names to letters that are obviously full of misleading information and falsehoods, but that seems to be Arjaree’s task.

Crown versus the public

Thomas Fuller in the New York Times has looked at the issue of the German seized-now-released Boeing 737, which the Thai government claimed “belonged” to Prince Vajiralongkorn and asks exactly the right questions.

He notes that, in the final days of the Abhisit Vejjajiva government, a deal was struck whereby the Thai taxpayer paid a bond for the release of an aircraft the government claims “belongs” to the prince. As PPT stated in its second post on this saga, the question of ownership raised serious issues of the relationship between crown and public.

Fuller makes the same point when he states that the Thai government’s actions “left unanswered was the question of who, precisely, owns the plane.” As he summarizes,

The case underlined a long-unresolved, and rarely discussed, question about the privy purse and the public purse in Thailand — and, ultimately, whether certain assets are held by crown or by country. At issue are an estimated 1.1 trillion baht, or $37 billion, in real estate holdings alone, plus substantial stakes in two of Thailand’s most successful companies. But the agency that manages the assets, the Crown Property Bureau, is under no obligation to detail the holdings or how profits are spent….

Fuller associates this ownership with the CPB and it needs to be emphasized that it is not clear that the plane seized by the Germans had anything to do with the CPB. What Fuller does is draw attention to the broader issue of crown property. PPT won’t go through all the details in Fuller’s article, although if it is blocked in Thailand, readers can email us, and we’ll post it all. Here, we’ll just make a few of the important points.

Fuller notes that “the subject of the crown finances remains mostly taboo in a country that regularly enforces a strict law against criticizing the monarchy. The media in Thailand reported on the controversy over the crown prince’s plane, but the episode did not generate commentary in the mainstream media about the larger questions of ownership.”

As PPT has noted several times, the lack of transparency and control of the CPB by the monarch is associated with the current reign. The opaque management and operation of the CPB is becoming a serious issue, and it scares those who manage the CPB so much that they have taken baby steps to trying to appear more transparent. As Fuller says, “Much remains unknown about the bureau’s assets.” In fact, his statement is weak; almost nothing significant is known.

He notes that, in 2008, Forbes magazine “ranked the Thai king as the world’s richest royal, the Thai government strongly protested, saying the magazine had conflated the king’s personal wealth with assets managed by the bureau.” As others have pointed out, this is a nonsensical response. Only the crown controls the CPB and no recent government has ever sought to change this situation.

Fuller adds that income from the CPB “is separate from the approximately $350 million in taxpayer money allocated for the royal household, royal-led development projects and other expenses related to the royal family.”

In fact, PPT thinks $350 million of taxpayer money is an under-estimate. For example, in the Abhisit Vejjajiva government’s last budget the first three lines of the Ministry of Finance’s allocation was for royal things and amounted to about $100 million. Line after line in the budget allocates funds to the royals. This is public information, but as far as PPT knows, going through the Budget Bureau’s allocations has not been a task yet completed.

As Fuller points out, the “king and his family also have personal assets” and it is this arena where the prince’s Boeing 737 seems to have landed, if the government is to be believed.

Fuller reckons that the monarchy’s wealth is seldom questioned “because King Bhumibol commands widespread respect after more than six decades on the throne and because of the law protecting the monarchy against insult.” PPT reckons that the first factor really only applies to government and the bureaucracy. No one is willing to question the deals done by individual royals or by the CPB.

Fuller’s parting remark is important, and a point we’d missed: “As for the specific question of the prince’s plane, a German court was supposed to rule on its ownership in September. But with the aircraft now back in Thai possession, the case is closed.” That’s another of those eye-opening moments! Of course!

 

Sedition, monarchy and crown property

Prachatai has two stories worth comment. The first is a short note about a group of 50 yellow shirts lodging a complaint with police, urging them to charge some 300 writers and others with “sedition and attempting to overthrow the monarchy” for signing a petition for the reform of the lese majeste law. It seems that for the balmy yellow ones, even seeking reform a problematic law is beyond the pale.

In the second post, lese majeste defendant Somsak Jeamteerasakul gets testy with the Crown Property Bureau’s recent annual report – we think it might be their first ever such report. This is a long post and worth reading in full. In short, Somsak takes up the CPB’s claim that “Crown property is state property and public property, for which the government through the Minister of Finance as the Chairperson is responsible, and which the CPB takes care of.”

Somsak says this “statement is not true, de jure and de facto.” He later concludes, following a listing of legal interpretations, that “the 2010 CPB Annual Report is an attempt to distort…”, adding: “That crown property and the Crown Property Bureau fall under the exclusive oversight of the King (and are accountable to no one else) is a fact known for a long time in all sectors, business or government, and even in public. It is therefore incredible that the 2010 CPB Annual Report tries to distort the fact by saying that CPB is under the ‘responsibility’ of the government.”

Of course, as Somsak points out, this CPB sleight of hand is to deflect attention away from the vast wealth controlled by the monarch and to obscure the fact that in most modern monarchies, crown property is state property. In Thailand, it is the king’s property. PPT might add that this is a politically-motivated statement, seeking to deflect the criticism that is made of this obscenely rich royal family.

 

The rich, minus 1

Forbes has just published its annual rich list – The World’s Billionaires 2011 – and lists three for Thailand. The ranking hasn’t changed much since 2010, although wealth is increasing:

Dhanin

Ranked at 152 worldwide is Dhanin Chearavanont & family with assets valued at $6.5 Billion, mainly centered on the Charoen Phokphand (CP) group. Forbes lists the main holdings: 7-Eleven store operator, CP ALL, Charoen Pokphand Foods, PT Charoen Pokphand.  Also owns country’s third largest mobile phone company, which just took over Hutchison Telecom’s Thailand operations. Dhanin is listed as a “philanthropist” who “restores Buddhist temples in Thailand, sponsors schools and orphanages.” He’s also a full member of the group of business leaders who give strong support to the monarchy and its causes, political and otherwise. Regulalrly seen providing donations to royals.

Chaleo

Ranked 208 is Red Bull’s Chaleo Yoovidhya. He is listed as the founder of “f Thai energy drink producer T.C. Pharmaceuticals. Teamed up with Austrian Dietrich Mateschitz two decades ago to create energy drink Red Bull. Chaleo provided beverage formula and his partner contributed the marketing flair. Today Red Bull, which has $5 billion (sales), plans to expand to China this year. Each partner owns 49% of the company. Chaleo’s son, Chalerm, who owns one of Asia’s leading wine producers, Siam Winery, holds remaining 2%. Family upped stake in privately held Piyavate Hospital.” The group recently sponsored a major royal event.

Charoen

Ranked at 247 is Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi. Forbes writes that “he made his fortune selling inexpensive beer and whiskey. Controls Thai Bev, Thailand’s largest brewer and distiller, best known for its Chang Beer. Took his company public in Singapore in 2006 after Buddhist protesters [led by PAD leader Chamlong Srimuang] stopped the listing on Thailand’s stock exchange. His privately held TCC Land owns Bangkok’s famous tech-mall Pantip Plaza, Hotel Plaza Athenee in Manhattan. Also owns other hotels in Asia, the U.S. and Australia, residential, commercial and retail buildings in Singapore and Thailand.” He has good bureaucratic contacts through his liquor and beer businesses. Charoen has been a generous donor to royal activities. He is remarkably powerful and has huge cash flow, which makes him a valuable political ally.

Missing, of course, is the wealthiest family in Thailand. That’s because the they appear on a very special list at Forbes that we posted on in July 2010 as the wealthiest royals. Ranked on the assets of the Crown Property Bureau alone, the royal family would rank as high as 7 or 8 on the list of the world’s billionaires.

Updated: Stupid foreigners, the monarchy’s wealth and messed up brains

A report in the Vancouver Sun which placed Thailand’s king on top of its list of the 10 richest world leaders.

The story states: “Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak resigned power as Egypt’s president today, and leaves with a reported fortune of anywhere between $40-70 billion. Here are some other world leaders who have a healthy nest egg socked away for their retirement.” Here’s the list, with Mubarak’s alleged personal wealth listed:

1. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand ($30 billion)

2. Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei ($20 billion)

3. Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of UAE ($18 billion)

4. King Abdullah bin Abul Aziz of Saudi Arabia ($21 billion)

5. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai ($12 billion)

6. Hosni Mubarak ($10 billion)

7. Silvio Berlusconi ($9 billion)

8. Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein ($3.5 billion)

9. Emir of Qatar ($2 billion)

10. Asif Ali Zardari, President of Pakistan ($1.9 billion)

Perhaps the newspaper should have made it clear that the wealth of Thailand’s king is not entirely personal and is held for the monarchy. It does state: “The Thai government has disputed his position as the wealthiest head of state, saying that much of this is not part of his personal wealth.”

Sumet

It should also be added that the $30 billion figure only refers to the Crown Property Bureau, and that each member of the royal family is thought to be personally very wealthy as well. Of course, the figure takes no account of the billions handed over to the royals for “charity” or spent on keeping up appearances through large injections of taxpayer funds to the royals.

Long-time royal aide Sumet Tantivejkul, who is secretary-general of the Chaipattana Foundation and has overseen the vast portfolio of royal projects, has commented on this report (also see our 2009 post on Sumet extolling monarchy). His comments are posted at Prachatai. The report says that Sumet questioned the motives of “those who spread the news,” and implied a warning that those spreading stories could be in trouble.

Asked “about the increasingly open talk and criticism of the monarchy at social networking websites, Sumet said, “that lot don’t have identities, do they? They like cursing anybody they choose.  So [they] can say anything in the online world.  If we take them seriously, it messes up our brain.”

PPT cites this point first as the Sun story is all over these sites and we liked the idea of messed up brains. Presumably this means that thinking is impaired. We wonder, though, if thinking is impaired by having to dissemble for one’s sponsors and heroes? As an example, see how Sumet describes and explains royal wealth:

What is the Crown Property Bureau?  If you want to know whether HM is really rich or not, you have to look at his private property. That really belongs to him.  […]  But this has all been mixed up,’ he said.

‘Crown property means that it belongs to the state.  But when farangs see the emblem [of the CPB], oh! this must belong to the King.  In fact, the Ministry of Finance is in charge. The chair of the CPB is the Minister of Finance.  It’s not part of HM’s property.  It belongs to the institution.  It has a board,’ he said.

This is messed up thinking. Here’s what the CPB says at its website:

The Crown Property Bureau was established under the Royal Assets Structuring Act of 1936 and became a juristic person in 1948. According to the Act, a Crown Property Board was set up, to be chaired ex officio by the Finance Minister, and served by at least four royally-appointed directors. His Majesty the King would also name one of the board members the director-general of the Crown Property Bureau. The Board of Crown Property is responsible for the overall supervision of the activities of the Crown Property Bureau. Duties and responsibilities of the director-general are prescribed by the Board of Crown Property.

In effect, the king controls the CPB through his appointed board. More from that website:

… On 21 April 1935, the 1934 act to exempt royal assets from taxation took effect. The act categorized the royal assets into two types:

* Assets eligible for tax exemption

* Assets eligible for tax payment

On 19 July 1937, the Royal Assets Structuring Act of 1936 became effective. It separated the royal assets into “His Majesty’s personal assets”, “crown property” and “public property”. “His Majesty’s personal assets” would be managed by the Finance Ministry. The Crown Property Bureau was set up with the status equivalent to a division under the Treasury Department of the Finance Ministry.

We guess that when Sumet talks of “private property” that he means anything outside the above. The above shows control is with the king. Each of those appointed is a royalist, close to the palace (note that a slightly different list appears in the Thai version).

What the above doesn’t tell us is how the assets are used. The CPB has almost no transparency – look at the very limited list of  investments. It is opaque because the CPB is “special.” That list implies that the assets of the crown are not state assets.

That the Finance Minister is chair of the board does not mean that the assets are owned by the state and managed for the state. That position is one that was created under the law set by anti-royalist politicians and the intent of that law has long passed, most especially in deals done with the palace under a 1948 Act and then under General Sarit Thanarat. Of the 1948 Act, Porphant Ouyyanont in”The Crown Property Bureau in Thailand and the Crisis of 1997,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 38,1, 2008, says:

The Crown Property Act of 1948 [not mentioned above] reconstituted the CPB as a juristic person with considerable independence within the overall framework of the government. It also gave control back to the palace.

The minister of finance continued to serve as chairman of the CPB Board, but other board members, including the director, were chosen by the king. The role of the director, who had great independence in managing the CPB’s assets, became of paramount importance. While prior to 1948 there had been frequent changes of management, over the next six decades there were only three directors, giving great continuity. The two distinguishing characteristics of these directors were that they were well educated and palace insiders.

Later the author adds this:

The 1948 Act had some other important characteristics. It specified that the use of the PPB’s resources and income ‘‘depends totally on the royal inclination.’’ It laid down that the CPB’s landed assets could not be seized or transferred. It absolved the CPB from tax on its income (a provision that had been introduced in 1936). It constituted the CPB as an absolutely unique entity which was difficult to define in terms of Thai law. In the course of subsequent legal processes, the Council of State had to give rulings on the nature of the CPB on four occasions. Not one of the rulings was unanimous, and the four rulings conflict. The Council agreed that the CPB was not a private company, government department, or state enterprise, and ultimately in 2001 ruled it was a ‘‘unit of the state,’’ whatever that meant (Somsak, 2006: 67-93).

So when Sumet says: “Don’t think that farangs are always smart.  Many farangs are stupid,” he means in their interpreatation of the king’s/palace’s wealth. Leaving aside the racist slight, which is not uncommon from the amart, it seems that Thais too are perplexed by these “arrangements.” This includes those who have studied the CPB most closely. In fact, they are not stupid, and it is Sumet who is dissembling for political purposes, for Chirayu Isarangkun, the head of the CPB has stated the position clearly, as cited in the above academic article:

The fact that CPB is the investment arm for the monarchy, with a long-term and continuous reputation for reliability, induces Thai and foreign investors to seek joint ventures.

So Sumet can babble on for as long as he wants, claiming the king isn’t wealthy:

‘Is this an exaggeration?  The news spread.  Many people get excited, talking and writing all kinds of stuff….  Go and look at HM’s residence.  Don’t talk about foreign billionaires; even billionaires in Thailand are far richer than him.  So how can they say he is the world’s richest?  Insane,’ he said. ‘Look how he lives.  HM lives in a small palace, and is frugal.  He has been the example of sufficiency,’ he said.

Apart from the fact that the king seems to currently reside in a public hospital, his “small palace,” presumably at Hua Hin is just one of several palaces around the country, many of them barely used. And, the fact remains that the CPB and personal wealth of the monarchy in Thailand is stupendous. And, most of it has been developed during this long reign.

Royal charity

Every now and again there is a report in the media regarding the “generosity” of the world’s richest royals.

The Nation reports that the king and queen “have graciously seen to it that a house is built in Si Sa Ket’s Kanthararom district for 16-year-old Mathayom 4 student Songpol Sanohsap. Songpol filed a petition with the palace two years ago, saying his home was falling apart; his parents, who made brooms for a living, were very poor; his grandmother suffered from gastroenteritis due to malnutrition and that he had to bicycle 10-kilometres every day to get to school. He also has four school-age siblings.”

Yes, generous indeed of the rich palace dwellers (well, when the king isn’t in hospital, where’s he been for months and months). But wait! Was that two years!? Yep, it took two years to get around to the poor kid’s appeal. PPT assumes that the then 14 year-old was so desperate that he accepted the stories in the media of royal charity and decided to send the letter.And, we assume the kid and the family are happy enough to receive the charity.

Charity is the royal response to grinding poverty, together with calls for “sufficiency.” Recall that a couple or so years ago ideas about sufficiency economy were high on the royal propaganda agenda. Building a cheap house for the kid and his family is hardly going to break the bank for the royals, but it might be argued that they do this kind of thing all the time. They may do, but PPT suggests recalling Paul Handley’s discussion of how the royals get money from the public for their “good works” while keeping the merit. And see how they get it here. Sirindhorn seems the main collector of this loot these days.

In the same story, it is reported that “Privy Councillor Ampol Senanarong Thursday handed over the assistance in a ceremony at the Khukhan district office and also provided 500 relief bags to other residents.” Since at least the second rise of the red shirts, it seems to PPT that this kind of public charity has increased and seems heavily focused on the northeast.

Old models of royal propaganda and old ideas about how society should operate continue and yet it is difficult to ignore the realities of anti-monarchy politics in Thailand.

Royal lifestyle

It is that time of the year again. As we get closer to the king’s birthday, the syrupy articles extolling all of the alleged wonders of the king and royalty appear with even greater regularity. PPT doesn’t propose to comment on them in any detail. We will be tempted to make short observations from time to time.

We wonder if the king will appear or be released from hospital for his birthday. This hospitalization has now been for 9-10 weeks and it is almost 3 weeks since the monarch was said to be well on the road to recovery.

The Nation web page on Sunday has 2-3 articles on royalty, and a couple of them were noteworthy. The first was the story of the man who looks after the royal automobile fleet and the second was another polishing up of Sirivannavari Nariratana as a great designer.

The former story rivals the royal toothpaste tube veneration of previous years (if any reader can find a framed picture of the squeezed tube, we’d be pleased to post it). It is the usual smoke and mirrors because the royal family has a huge fleet of expensive vehicles, with the king’s Maybach 62 being one of the world’s most expensive cars, running at about US$3 million if it was purchased in Thailand (in Europe, it runs only to about 400,000 to 500,000 Euros). the comments about Chinese ethnicity and relationship to the monarchy might be interesting for some readers.

The story on Sirivannavari Nariratana is a kind of a follow-up to earlier stories about her designing. Readers will be intrigued to learn that her

new collection for her very own Sirivannavari label were inspired by her travels along the French Riviera, around Cairo and between the Greek island of Santorini and Capri in Italy. Entitled “The World is Not Enough” – at least that seems appropriate to this story – the princess says she created her collection while training with Giorgio Armani. What a life. Armani, Greek island, Capri and the Riviera!