Thailand’s hidden republican tradition | New Mandala

Thailand’s hidden republican tradition | New Mandala
Dr Patrick Jory, 19 JUL, 2016

Despite the intense royalist indoctrination of the Bhumibol era it would be naïve not to imagine that at least some Thais draw inspiration from the country’s long republican tradition.

Thailand is typically understood as a deeply royalist country ruled by a highly revered monarch.

The king’s image is everywhere. The capital, Bangkok, is strewn with monuments to past kings. Countless streets, bridges, dams, universities, schools, army bases, hospitals, etc. are named after royalty. The calendar is full of royal holidays. Thailand has one of the world’s strictest lèse majesté laws which forbids criticism of the king and royal family.

Given all this it may come as a surprise that republicanism is deeply ingrained in Thailand’s political tradition. In fact, Thailand has one of the oldest republican traditions in Asia.

The first proposal to limit the absolute power of the monarch famously came in a petition to the king in 1885. It was drafted not by the European colonial powers but by a group of Thai princes. Though unsuccessful, this was among the first indigenous attempts to limit monarchical power anywhere in Asia.

In 1912, one year after the Chinese revolution ended 2000 years of imperial monarchy, the Thai authorities foiled a plot involving “thousands” to overthrow Siam’s monarchy. It was even said that lots had been drawn to assassinate King Rama VI. The plotters were split between republicans and constitutional monarchists.

As Copeland has shown, the Siamese press at the time mercilessly mocked the monarchy and aristocracy in a way that is unheard of today.

The People’s Party finally succeeded in ending Siam’s absolute monarchy in a bloodless coup on June 24 1932.

What is not widely acknowledged is the influence of republican thinking on the People’s Party, especially the leading intellectual force behind the movement, French-trained lawyer Pridi Phanomyong. It is clearly evident in the famous People’s Party Announcement Number 1, issued after the coup, which Pridi is credited with drafting:

On the question of the head of state, the People’s Party does not wish to seize the throne. It will invite this king to continue in his office as king, but he must be placed under the law of the constitution governing the country. He will not be able to act of his own accord without receiving the approval of the House of Representatives. The People’s Party has informed the king of its wish. We await his reply. If the king refuses the invitation or does not reply by the deadline, selfishly believing that his power has been reduced, then he will be judged to be a traitor to the nation. It will be necessary to govern the country as a republic [prachathipatai]; that is, the head of state will be a commoner appointed by the House of Representatives for a fixed term of office [my italics].

Royalist historiography which dominates the official interpretation of the events of 1932 downplays the role of the People’s Party, instead crediting King Rama VII with granting the gift of “democracy” to the Thai people.

But as the highlighted sentence from the Announcement shows, the term “prachathipatai”, normally translated today as “democracy”, originally conveyed the meaning of “republic”.

In fact, as Nakharin has pointed out, in the original 1932 draft of the Announcement to eliminate any doubt the Thai wordprachathipatai was followed by the English translation, “republic.”

Official dictionaries from this period, both Thai-to-Thai and Thai-to-English, also commonly translate the Thai word prachathipatai as “republic.”

Before 1932, Pridi himself had taught his law students that there were two types of “democracy” (prachathipatai): a country with a president as the head of government, as in France, or a government in which executive authority lay with a committee, as in the Soviet Union.

So Thailand’s democratic history has distinctly republican roots.

For that reason royalists later coined the phrase, “prachathipatai an mi phra maha kasat song pen pramuk” to describe Thailand’s political system. The phrase is officially translated today as “constitutional monarchy”, but its literal translation is “democracy with the sacred, great king as head of state”. Its real purpose is to erase the original republican associations of the wordprachathipatai. Even the word “constitution” has been sacrificed, since placing the king “under” a constitution violates Buddhist spatial norms about the proper place of the king.

Following the failed Boworadet rebellion in 1933 the royalists were routed. King Prajadhipok went into exile and eventually abdicated. Other princes fled Siam or were imprisoned. The heir to the throne escaped to Switzerland. For a decade there was no king in Thailand. Military strongman Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram, who also had republican leanings, ruled as a virtual president. This was the closest Thailand has come to republican rule.

The story of the restoration of the monarchy after World War II has been told before. It culminates with the coups of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat in 1957 and 1958, following which, with the support of the United States, the monarchy became the figurehead of a virulently anti-communist military dictatorship. As Somsak has pointed out, for the royalists “the threat of communism and the threat of republicanism were one and the same thing”.

From this period monarchy in Thailand became more than just an institution. It legitimised an ideology of submission and servilitythat lives on today.

Under this royalist-military regime the erasure of Thailand’s republican tradition from official history was completed.

Following the routing of the Communist Party of Thailand and the end of the Cold War the last traces of republican political thinking were expunged. As a result a generation of Thais have been estranged from their country’s republican tradition.

The political conflict that erupted in 2005 between Thaksin and the palace has now entered its eleventh year with no resolution in sight. Royalists repeatedly accuse the Thaksin forces of seeking to lom jao – “overthrow the monarchy”. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, pro-Thaksin parties have repeatedly won free elections.

The mainstream pro-Thaksin forces have consistently denied they have a republican agenda. For obvious reasons surveying republican sympathies in Thailand today is impossible. Yet despite the intense royalist indoctrination of the Bhumibol era it would surely be naïve not to imagine that at least some of them may draw inspiration from Thailand’s long republican tradition.

Patrick Jory’s new book, “Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man”, has just been published by SUNY Press. For details, including how to order the book, see this link: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6222-thailands-theory-of-monarchy.aspx

The king still never smiles | New Mandala

The king still never smiles | New Mandala
Nicholas Farrelly, 9 MAY 2016

First published at Mekong Review, a quarterly literary journal based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej took the Chakri throne in June 1946. His remarkable 70-year reign is now the longest in Thai history, straddling multiple generations and a period of immense economic, political and technological change. As time marches on, the proportion of the Thai population that has known any other monarch has vanished. Where others have faded, King Bhumibol has survived.

In the decade since Paul Handley’s The King Never Smiles: A biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej was published, Thai society has lost its democratic facade. There have been two military coups, dozens of violent clashes in Bangkok, and hundreds of people have been locked up after finding themselves on the wrong side of callous political determinations. Others have been forced to seek sanctuary abroad. This chapter in King Bhumibol’s long reign has seen a miserable confrontation between duelling elites and the stark polarisation of political opinion in the provinces.

At the street level, this conflict has usually been painted in hues of ‘red’ and ‘yellow’, but anyone who watches closely knows it is more complicated than that. The reality can prove brutally disheartening. Like in many drawn-out political battles, much of the aggression is reserved for perceived traitors and deviants. Nonetheless, while the ‘yellows’ continue to exalt in the reflected glory of Bhumibol’s charismatic eminence, there are some courageous voices in the ‘red’ corner that ask penetrating questions of the royals and this noteworthy reign. These still have Handley to thank for presenting a considered rebuke to the painstakingly manicured mythology of a royal household above politics, supposedly disconnected from petty financial or personal concerns.

Handley invested many years disentangling the offcial narrative from the facts. His book is critical, yes, but also ultimately empathetic in its portrayal of a king whose ascension came at a moment of unspeakable personal, dynastic and national tragedy. Handley suggests that King Bhumibol never fully recovered from the death of his brother, King Ananda Mahidol, and the shock of his own elevation to the throne. This dark shadow, like much else in Handley’s book, is not supposed to be discussed in Thailand. Since the publication of The King Never Smiles, the country’s draconian and vindictive lèse majesté law has become the preferred weapon for battering the vulnerable and the brave. It has been used with increasing enthusiasm by weak governments, including today’s militocracy, looking to buttress their royalist credentials. In practice, the law is used to stamp out dissent and punish opponents. It is ludicrously difficult to mount any effective defence to a lèse majesté charge, and the accused often end up seeking a reduction in punishment with a guilty plea.

Handley’s book has been caught up in these proceedings. Joe Gordon, a Thai American, spent thirteen months in jail for translating portions of the text. A full Thai language translation has been available, online, for years, but it is dangerous to ‘like’ or ‘share’ it. In the recent past, before the relative anarchy offered by the online realm, it was possible to maintain a single version of the royal truth. Today’s multiplicity of perspectives and narratives makes that impossible.

In response, there has been a massive investment made in fortifying the story of King Bhumibol as Thailand’s exemplary centre, a semi-divine presence bestowing prosperity and security on the common people. In 2012, for example, the palace supported the publication of the epic King Bhumibol: A life’s work, which offers a favourable interpretation of his role in the country’s development. This lavish rejoinder is not without merit, but should, in all circumstances, be read alongside The King Never Smiles. The problem is that Handley’s work is still deemed far too explosive to be openly available inside Thailand. Following a pattern established in the final year of Thaksin Shinawatra’s prime ministership, subsequent Thai governments have kept up the fiction that the book poses a credible threat to national security. Over time, this directive has been extended to other writers, websites and publications.

Yet the official Thai retort to Handley’s exertion has failed. Handley’s work still motivates some good analysis of the royal family across its economic, political and cultural dimensions. We now know much more about the holdings of the Crown Property Bureau, thanks in large part to the impressive sleuthing of Porphant Ouyyanont. Regarding politics, a rising generation of Thai scholars has grappled with a re-militarised and contentious landscape, with notable contributions by writers like Aim Sinpeng, Prajak Kongkirati and Pitch Pongsawat. Then there is the story of the king as a cultural icon. Perhaps the most incisive analysis of this issue is by the impressive young German scholar, Serhat Ünaldi. Other durable writers like Kevin Hewison, Duncan McCargo, Nick Nostitz, and Andrew MacGregor Marshall, have also made an impact.

It is MacGregor Marshall who has kept up the most consistent criticism of the political and economic meddling of the royal family. His A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand’s Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century draws on a wide range of source material, including Wikileaks cables, to eviscerate royalist mythology. His account of recent Thai political conflict argues that the succession remains unresolved. MacGregor Marshall insists there is deep unease among the country’s power brokers over Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn’s prospective elevation to the throne. From this perspective, the 2006 and 2014 coups make sense as preparation for handling a crisis right at the apex of Thai society.

To read the rest of the essay click here.

Nicholas Farrelly is co-founder of New Mandala. 

Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s royalist history | New Mandala

Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s royalist history | New Mandala
Andrew Walker, 7 MARCH 2016

New Mandala co-founder Andrew Walker reviews A Kingdom in Crisis.

There is a long tradition in Western commentary on Asia pointing to the reprehensible behaviour of oriental despots.

Advocates for colonial expansion often built their case around the need to liberate the Asian masses from their rapacious, and sometimes unhinged, rulers. Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s A Kingdom in Crisis sits firmly within this orientalist tradition.

A Kingdom in Crisis provides a salacious chronicle of royal brutality and “murderous violence” in pre-modern Siam (p 53). Princes who fell out of favour were put in velvet sacks and beaten to death with sandalwood clubs (p 43); petty criminals were slow-roasted alive (p 53); the owners of dogs whose barking disturbed the king were “killed in the cruellest  fashion on earth” (p  52); and unsuspecting maidens were arbitrarily sacrificed to  meet the king’s superstitious whim (p 122). There were also “blood-curdling punishments” for those bold enough to engage in “immoral intercourse with a lady of the Palace” (p 51).

Palace intercourse — MacGregor Marshall shows us that there was an awful lot of it — was the prerogative of extraordinarily randy monarchs. Prasart Thong, who seized the throne in 1629, was a pervert, selecting the “prettiest maidens and daughters of the greatest men” (p 124) as his concubines! And even the scholarly Mongkut, released from his monastic sublimation at the ripe old age of 46, begat 82 children by 35 women in his “harem” (p 129).

Do not be misled by the imagery of the “land of smiles” MacGregor Marshall helpfully warns those who mistake tourism slogans for reality: Thais are very good at staging political theatre, but behind the scenes a violent and libidinous orient is lurking.

The core objective of A Kingdom in Crisis is to challenge Thailand’s royalist mythology.

In simple terms, the core myth is that the king is a unifying, integrating  and  benevolent force in Thai society. Drawing extensively on Thailand’s long royal history, MacGregor Marshall shows that, in fact, the monarch in Siam/ Thailand has been a powerhouse of intra-elite conflict, while at the same time providing an ideological figurehead to facilitate the oppression of the masses. The book’s far from flattering account of Thai history draws on the accounts of Westerners resident in pre-modern Siam (with  surprisingly little critical reflection on how their vested interests may have shaped the shocking tales they tell), modern (and not so modern) scholars, popular tales, and, most originally, the WikiLeaks cables.

It certainly is a myth-busting tour-de-force showing how Thai kings, and the elites that surround them, have regularly generated political crises, which also reflect competition between narrow sectional interests.  However, whether or not the book will achieve its myth-busting objective is hard to tell. Most readers, I suspect, will already be converts to MacGregor Marshall’s position. By contrast, those who subscribe to the royal mythology will probably be confirmed in their view that unsympathetic Westerners like MacGregor Marshall are determined to slander the royal institution.

The book’s central claim is that the current political crisis that has gripped Thailand since 2005 “is essentially a succession struggle over who will become monarch when King Bhumibol dies” (p 3). The hitherto “unacknowledged war of succession” (p 4) is the key to making “Thailand’s bewildering crisis … comprehensible” (p 5). Given the centrality, and boldness, of this claim, MacGregor Marshall has surprisingly little to say about it.

Part III of the book addresses “the secrets of the Thai succession” (p 105). MacGregor Marshall starts this section by categorically rejecting the conventional wisdom that Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn will take the throne following the passing of his father. He confidently declares that predictions of an orderly succession “are completely untrue” (p 109).

So what are the secrets that are revealed in these central chapters? From my reading there are three. First, that going back centuries, royal succession in Southeast Asia has been contested and often violent. Second, that elites have often attempted to manoeuvre weak kings onto the throne. Third, that Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn is unpopular and there are serious doubts held about his suitability for the throne.

All in all, very standard stuff that has been well known to even casual observers of Southeast Asia for a long time. Some readers may regard this as evidence that is compelling enough for MacGregor Marshall to dismiss as “completely untrue” the claim that Thailand’s royal succession is a done deal. I do not.

In the latter chapters of the book, which provide a very lively and readable account of the past 10 years of political crisis in Thailand, MacGregor Marshall makes further specific claims about the succession. He suggests that the “ruling class had long been confident that when the time came they would be able to keep Vajiralongkorn off the throne” (p 158)  but  that  their  optimism was  “evaporating”  (p  158)  in  2005 as a result  of the birth of the prince’s first son, and his close relationship with then-Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

These favourable developments for Vajiralongkorn generated a climate of “apocalyptic dread among the elite” (p 159). Later, he reports that the “establishment” assumed that the 2006 coup was part of a plan to manage the succession (p 167) and that in 2007, the “elite secretively plotted” (p 170) about the succession and launched a campaign to damage Vajiralongkorn’s reputation. MacGregor Marshall also claims that the Queen, having previously supported Vajiralongkorn, decided to “freeze her son out of the royal succession, planning to reign as regent” (p 173). We are also told that the “army leadership also supported blocking the prince” (p 174).

These are all plausible claims, and they are consistent with rumours and commentaries that circulate online.

However, A Kingdom in Crisis presents no compelling evidence to back them up. In most cases no sources are cited. Of course, given the threat of Thailand’s oppressivelese majeste law, it is very reasonable not to cite specific people. But some indication of the nature and provenance of the evidence is called for, given the importance of the claims and the confidence with which they are made. More careful reference to sources may also have moderated the tendency to attribute specific motivations to very broadly defined social groups: the “ruling class”, the “elite” and the “establishment”.

In some cases reference is made to WikiLeaks material, but this is not compelling either. One cited cable refers to attempts to undermine the reputation of Vajiralongkorn’s consort, but the author of the cable only “assumes” that this has “implications” for the prince (p 170). Discussions between the US ambassador and various Thai elder statesmen who were critical of Vajiralongkorn are also cited. To account for the fact that these prominent Thais made no mention of a succession struggle, MacGregor Marshall declares that they “lied … to conceal their active efforts to sabotage the succession” (p 187).  All in all, MacGregor Marshall’s evidence does not match his claims.

MacGregor Marshall’s preoccupation with the succession points to a broader problem with this book.

Despite its provocations and iconoclasm this is very much a royalist account of Thai history. Like Thailand’s royalists, MacGregor Marshall places the king at the heart of the Thai polity. In A Kingdom in Crisis, contestation over royal power is the engine room of 21st century Thai politics, as it has been over the past millennium (p  213).

The mass of people sometimes do feature, but they are peripheral to MacGregor Marshall’s central purpose. When they do enter into the narrative, it is as an undifferentiated mass of “ordinary  people” who are struggling against the elite in pursuit of “greater freedom and a fairer society” (p 109).

This two-dimensional and a-historical model — a cut-throat elite ruling over a repressed population — is classic orientalism and contributes little to an understanding of the complex and cross-cutting social and economic forces that have brought Thailand to its contemporary political impasse.

Andrew Walker is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the ANU Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and co-founder of New Mandala.

This review was published in the December 2015 issue of the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies journal, Contemporary Southeast Asia. The second edition of ‘A Kingdom in Crisis’ is now available from Zed Books.