Additional attempts at shoring up the monarchy against the danger of electoral politics have been evident since the coup. The dramatic increase in the budget and powers of the Royal Thai Army, the legal dissolution of two of Thaksin’s parties, the five-year ban from politics for their leading politicians, and the drafting of a new constitution which curtails the powers of elected governments all point in this direction.
With the king’s advanced age and poor health, much speculation now surrounds the succession. The first issue is who should succeed the King. According to the constitution, the succession will take place according to the 1924 Palatine Law, enacted when Thailand was still an absolute monarchy. The Palatine Law rules that the monarch’s eldest son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, succeeds to the throne.
Yet it is no secret that the crown prince is deeply unpopular, with opposition extending to the highest levels of the Thai establishment. The Wikileaks cables reveal that key figures close to the palace, including Privy Council Chairman General Prem Tinasulanonda, fellow Councillor Siddhi Savetsila and palace favourite and former prime minister Anand Panyarachun view the crown prince as unfit to inherit the throne.
The concern is that if the succession were unsuccessful it could threaten the survival of the monarchy itself.
What is less well widely known is that the constitution in fact does allow for a different succession scenario. The King may unilaterally amend the Palatine Law himself, or, should he choose not to name an heir and the throne become vacant, the Privy Council (the royally appointed advisory body) can choose the successor, and ‘for this purpose the name of a princess may be submitted’. That the royalist drafters of the 2007 post-coup constitution retained these provisions strongly suggests they wished to keep open the possibility of someone other than the crown prince succeeding to the throne. All this points to the possibility of a succession struggle between Vajiralongkorn and his younger sister, Sirindhorn, who is considered close to her father and is known to have significant support in the military.
Yet there is a much more important issue at stake than the personality of the successor to the throne. The essential problem of the Thai monarchy today is its backward and deeply undemocratic nature. Symbolic of this backwardness are the feudal protocols that require commoners to prostrate themselves on the ground in the presence of members of the royal family and to refer to themselves as ‘under the dust on the sole of the royal foot’. If the monarchy is to play a role in Thailand after the current king’s passing, fundamental reform of the monarchy’s powers and culture will be necessary.
Thai academics and activists are already discussing proposals for such reforms, although so far politicians are yet to take up the cause publicly. Potential changes include reforming Article 112 of the Criminal Code — the lèse-majesté law — which forbids criticism of the king, queen, the heir to the throne and the regent, with a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail. It is the harshest such law in the world, with hundreds of people currently in jail or awaiting prosecution because of it.
Other proposals include reforming or abolishing the powerful Privy Council, whose members are chosen by the king and which is rumoured to control senior military and judicial appointments. The council’s chairman is believed to have masterminded the September 2006 coup, and another privy councillor, General Surayud Chulanont, was installed afterwards as prime minister.
Also in the spotlight is the incessant and often ludicrous propaganda promoting the monarchy and members of the royal family; non-existent government oversight of the Crown Property Bureau whose assets, according to Forbes magazine, make the Thai king the wealthiest monarch in the world; and the lack of accountability for the thousands of Royal Projects whose activities are a staple of royalist propaganda, but whose finances and real achievements are effectively protected from scrutiny by the lèse-majesté law.
The disastrous floods of late 2011 have forced a pause in the ongoing cold war between the forces arrayed behind the monarchy and those supportive of Thaksin, the Pheu Thai government led by his sister, Yingluk Shinawatra, and electoral politics more broadly. It is likely, however, that political hostilities will resume as soon as the floodwaters recede. The stakes involved in this struggle are massive. Vested interests in the military, the judiciary, senior levels of the bureaucracy and certain business groups depend on the monarchy and will fight to preserve its leverage over Thailand’s political system. On the opposing side, deep and widespread resentment against the monarchy exists among those who view it as complicit in the killings of red shirt protestors in the violence of April-May 2010. They are unlikely to tolerate another coup, and with uncertainty surrounding the succession, the monarchy’s future looks precarious indeed.
Patrick Jory is Senior Lecturer in Southeast Asian History at the University of Queensland.
This article appeared in the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Where is Thailand headed?‘.
I think at the end of the day, it’s not so much about the Monarchy-it’s about the Military not wanting to lose power. In a democracy, the Military takes instructions from a civilian government. But in Thailand’s case, the military hides behind the Lese Majeste laws to stay in power always threatening a coup. Until, Thailand’s military is put in its place, a government cannot do its work. This is going to be difficult for Thaksin and his merry men and women.
The relationship between the Thai Monarchy and and the Thai Military can be best characterised as symbiotic, each leaching from the other to the tune of the law of diminishing returns.
I fear that in the next couple of years our worse case scenarios imagined for Thailand will not be enough to describe the rapidly approaching chaos, division and widespread violence.
If the future proves this prognostication wrong, I will applaud endlessly. If the future proves me wrong and there is no reform, there will be no tenable future to speak of.
What’s wrong with Thai politics?: Divine-authoritarianism vs Human-progressivism
Humans reason, think and act in terms of frames and metaphors ; 90 per cent of reason is unconcious.
Politically speaking, the policies of a political party in democratic system cannot be decided on by only the leader of the party, but by all of its party members, and its think tank; they work together to achieve their goal of preserving political and morality. Take one of the previous govenments of Thailand as an example of how the political policies of a political party play out?
In 2010 the then Abhisit goverment decided on mimicking the policies of Thaksin goverment, but delivered them in a patronizing way. This suggests that the Democrat Party of Thailand has a deeply authoritarian political ideology. Within this ideology, the government assumes a higher hierarchical status than the people it governs, and with higher level of morality. Its function is to make sure that the people are disciplined and obey the rules set up by the government. Assuming that all people were born bad and immoral, it punishes everybody who is not disciplined or does not follow the rules of law; and assuming that the world out there is bad, it requires that the people be disciplined to prosper and to compete for success. Its language includes ‘law and order’, and the Lese Majeste Law is one of the rules to ensure discipline and obedience. This type of goverment sees its people who have no chance in life and stay poor as immoral because they are not obedient and not disciplined enough: it is their fate and life destination decided by God and their deeds from previous life, and no one can help them prosper. What the goverment can do is to give them some hand-outs so that they can live on to serve the authority. Thus, patronizing medicines and treatments of ailments, patronizing Royal projects without acknowledging that the people have the rights for public funds. This divine-authoritorianism ideology has been well planted and subtly propagandized throughout Thai history, through media, public discourse and narratives, state ceremonials, with the institution of the monarchy functioning as the highest moral authority–a god-like status. (Do you know why members of the authoritorian class hand out food and drink to vicitims of natural dissasters like flood victims on the expense of national budget? Do you know why the one at the highest rank of the hierarchy is called the ‘father of the country’? Do you know why there is a special language and words for members of high authoritarians? Do you know why the leader of the hierarchy and his/her relatives sit higher than anybody else? Do you know why lay poeple must kneel down on the floor in the presence of the authoritarian class? Do you know why all of these are done to let you see over and over and over and over and over again? And if you are a student, do you know why a short, very short hair-cut? Why student uniforms? Why lining-up singing anthems? Why ‘wai-krue’? Why study to the tests and exams even though you do not really understand the subjects?) All these are done deliberately to strengthen an automatic obedience, This structure of behaviour is hard to get rid of, and it becomes automatic and unconcious. Once you reason against it, you are seen as immoral and bad.
This type of political idea is ingrained in the Thai minds since they were born in that, in Thai culture, the father is the one who has the highest authority over children and who has the highest morality. And the children, to be considered as good and moral, obey that authority. This belief is a ready-made unconcious blueprint in the minds of most of Thais. And this unconcious mind is easily made use of and manipulated by the authoritarians with great effect to strenghthen their political ideology, now in disguise of the Democrat Party where the goverment has moral authority, and the people must be obedient and disciplined.
What is more, this type of government has no moral responsibility to the people because it is assumed that the authoritarian classes are moral and possess a holy power given by god or divine. In Thailand you quite often hear the saying “the king can do no wrong.” or the like.
Now, let’s turn to Thaksin government’s policies. It seems that Thaksin goverment was influenced by a different ideology; it assumes that the government has moral responsibility to the people; that is, it has to protect and empower the people so that they can prosper. One way of doing so is providing them with healthcare, loans, equal educational opportunity, public facilities of infrastructures so that they can help themselves in seeking wealth and opportunities. This kind of goverment seems to provide an equal opportunity to all people with the ideas of protection and empowerment from the government. Through the eyes of this political morality, all people are born equal and have equal rights to public funds and welfares: equality for all. Its language includes ‘equality for all’, and ‘if you were born poor and still die poor, it is the goverment’s fault’ (one of Thaksin’s famous lines). So, the essence of this political morality involves, from the goverment side, empathy, empowerment, protection, accountability and from the people side responsibilty.
This latter type of political idea is also ingrained unconciously in most of Thais’ minds; that is, there is also another type of idealized family in any culture whose both parents are nurturing and caring. Within this family, all children are learned to be responsible to themselves and to others; they are learned to look after each other, neighbors as well as environment. This model of governing is realized in Thaksin’s policy of economy, healthcare, and education. Yet, not all of Thaksin’s policies are born out of this model. Some of his policies are of authoritarianism too, such as his policies on anti-drugs, anti-corruption and problem in the South in which the strict, authoritarian father model is also applied where the practices involved harsh punishments. So, Thaksin was a biconceptual politician: he used unconciously both nutruring, caring parents, and some strict authoritorian models, but on different issues.
Our political morality is unconcious; it is operating in our brain without us knowing, and the way we reason and act are unconciously. We have no control over it. One way that the government manipulate our mind is through language. The easiest way to test this is that when you say the words ‘devil’ or ‘public toilet’, you feel different from when you say ‘mother’ or ‘ice-cream’. This is because the word ‘devil’ and ‘public toilet’ come from different neuron pathways steming from different emotional activations than the word ‘mother’ or ‘ice-cream’.
To solve the political problem in Thailand now is to make the people aware of their political mindsets–their political unconciousness; then things might turn better, hopefully.
A true democracy occurs only when the government has a nurturing, caring parents in which everybody prospers and looks after each other.
Give the people the right tool for making political decision.
Let the divine-authoritarianism model sleep and foster the nurturing, caring parents model in our mind.
Good luck, Thailand.