🇹🇭 The plot thickens

Rama X speaks (begrudgingly)

November 10, 2020

Hello friends! 

While we’re waiting for Myanmar to tally its votes — it may take a minute, the turn-out was higher than expected! — let’s check in on Thailand. Give me a yell if I’m doing too much Thailand lately. I’m just obsessed. I still can’t believe we’re here. 

Also, I had a chat with my pal Jeff Hutton about Thailand and Malaysia. He always has the best guests so I’m stoked to be part of that line-up and you should definitely subscribe to see who he has up next. Here’s Apple Podcast and Spotify but you can find it on whatever app you prefer. 

See you soon,Erin Cook

Let’s start here with Channel 4. Fans of the King waited in the baking Bangkok sun, reports Jonathan Miller before he came by for weirdly angled photos and videos. Miller does something extraordinary here and is able to get the King to say a few words on the movement, in which he calls Thailand the ‘land of compromise’ and pledges his love to all Thais. The body language between the King and sister Princess Sirivannavari is fascinating. 

Last night’s protest in Bangkok saw police turn water cannons as protestors attempted to approach the Royal Household Bureau at the Grand Palace. Protestors were held back by a barricade of buses and barbed wire established near the Supreme Court building at Sanam Luang, where police said they’d cut it out if the demonstrators just stayed put, according to Bangkok Post. 

Four red post boxes were set up to ‘send’ letters to King Maha Vajiralongkorn. “We are marching to hand our letters to the King, to talk about our difficulties and our suffering. Our three demands remain the same,” Patsaravalee Tanakitvibulpon told the huge crowd, as reported by Straits Times. An open letter addressed to the King said: 

When you hear all the flattering praise from the people, you must also hear fearless criticisms and suggestions all the same. When the King truly cherishes democracy, all people will find happiness. The three demands from the people are the utmost compromise.

Coconuts Bangkok asks the question this feels like it’s all heading towards — is violence inevitable? They pose the question to a handful of experts and activists from both sides of the red and yellow shirt spectrum. It’s 16-year-old Benjamaporn ‘Ploy’ Nivas, a leader in the Bad Students Movement, who gets the final word.

If we don’t achieve our aims, if those wielding power don’t change and adapt to the people’s demands, there will always be an outcry from the public. Times change, and different players will always come in, but history repeats itself. No matter how long it takes – another 10, 20, 30 years – the people will prevail.

It’s ominous and must be considered more. Joshua Kurlantzick for Asia Unbound traces the King’s ‘subtle’ signals which can tell us more about the enduring support for loyalists. 

The king has signaled his subtle support for the royalist movement to fight back. As James Buchanan of Mahidol University International College in Bangkok has noted, the king, at his palace, publicly praised a royalist supporter who had faced off with protesters, telling the supporter, “Very brave, very good, thank you.” The king also appeared to greet Buddha Issara, a controversial former monk who has been a force behind a prominent archroyalist group. Buchanan notes—and we concur—that through these messages the king is showing that he will not back down from the demonstrators, and will encourage royalists to fight back.

This signaling is a tactic borrowed from earlier periods of conflict in Thailand. During Thailand’s 2010 protests and, ultimately, the harsh crackdown on them, then-Queen Sirikit (now Queen Mother Sirikit) and then–Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn made televised, highly-publicized visits to dead and injured soldiers who had been combating protesters. In this way, they clearly showed their support for the police and the army, and also for royalist supporters, some of whom were egging on violence.

He also writes that given the history of the country, we can hardly conclusively rule out a military coup even with the government stacked with them. Today, loyalist activists will reportedly plead with new military head General Narongpan Jitkaewthae to stage another coup. 

“We will be a long-lasting people institution that helps our nation, government and its officials give the correct history of Thailand. We have to educate people focusing on the King’s philosophy,” said organiser Krit Yeimmethakorn, as reported by Coconuts Bangkok. Don’t forget staging a coup is punishable by death or life imprisonment, a Democrats MP reminds. 

Still, the pressure is on Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, whose resignation is one of three major demands of the movement. The pressure is getting to him as seen by these extremely pass-ag quotes to Bangkok Post:

"If in the future, there is a person who is better, more capable and more honest than me, similarly honest, [he or she] would continue the work and be in charge of the country," he said.

"But being in power is not a fun matter. I exercised a lot of power when I was the army chief for four years.

I am fed up with using power. I used the power to take care of good people and punish people who do bad things. Only two [kinds of exercising power] are difficult enough already."

Further reading:

The future we want is simple. We want a functioning parliamentary system where power truly belongs to the people. A balance between the three separate branches of power would allow an effective government and genuine rule of law.

We want an economy that rewards hard work and creativity. The gap between the rich and the poor must be reduced by abolishing laws that were created to protect monopolies, by providing greater access to capital for the poor, and by building better public services that accommodate everyone.

We want to build a better welfare system, a safety net that allows people to try and fail. This is particularly important in a fast-moving world, and Thais have every right to expect this. We have enough financial resources for a better welfare system without pushing fiscal constraints to the limit if our budget is managed without corruption.

But there have been an increasingly significant amount of people associated with ‘elites’ – whether through work or family connections – to lend their support to those demanding change, even if they have done so more quietly.

We solicited statements from six such people, to understand why they support the pro-democracy movement. For some, this has come at the expense of their own social standing or personal relationships. Fearing this, others have not felt comfortable airing their support publicly. But across all the statements, one uniting theme stands out: a firm commitment to democracy. 

Those that have chosen to remain anonymous will be assigned a nickname.

His image, not crafted in the role of the dhammaraja, or based on the notion that the monarch should be working for the betterment of Thai society and fully engaged in promoting their general welfare, stands in contrast and suffers as a result. Part of it is related to his more direct leadership and growing public criticism over his prolonged absences in Germany.

In the space between October 2016 and October 2020, the Thai monarchy has failed to build a public image – or seek an existence in the ample shadow of Rama 9. Since his ascension to the throne, Vajiralongkorn has instead portrayed himself more of an absolute monarch, ruling not by earning legitimacy or inspiring loyalty among his Thai subjects, but through the instillment of fear and anxiety.

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