Bangkok
— A battle over Thailand’s future is raging, but the one
man who has been able to resolve such intractable conflicts
in the past has been notably silent: King Bhumibol Adulyadej,
long a unifying father figure for his nation.
Thailand
is convulsed by a bitter struggle between the nation’s
elite and its disenfranchised poor, played out in protests
that have paralyzed Bangkok for weeks and now threaten to
expand. The ailing 82–year–old king finds his power to
sway events ebbing as the fight continues over the shape of
a post–Bhumibol Thailand.
“It’s
much bigger than the issue of succession,” said Charles
Keyes, an expert on Thailand at the University of Washington
in Seattle. “It’s a collapse of the political consensus
that the monarchy has helped maintain.”
As
his country suffers through its worst political crisis in
decades, the king has disappointed many Thais by saying
nothing that might calm the turmoil, as he did in 1973 and
1992 when with a few quiet words he halted eruptions of
political bloodletting.
For
more than two months now, demonstrators known as the red
shirts, who represent in part the aspirations of the rural
and urban poor, have occupied parts of Bangkok, forcing
major malls and hotels to close as they demand that Prime
Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve Parliament and hold a
new election. Soldiers and protesters continued battling
Saturday.
After
taking the throne nearly 64 years ago, King Bhumibol
expanded his role as a constitutional monarch without
political power into an enormous moral force, earned through
his civic work and political astuteness.
He
has also presided over an expansion of the royal family’s
now vast business holdings. With the monarchy at its heart,
an elite royalist class grew up including the bureaucracy,
the military and entrenched business interests. A palace
Privy Council has exerted power during the current crisis.
It is this elite class that the protesters are now
challenging.
Those
who seek to maintain the status quo have proclaimed
themselves loyal to the king and have accused the red shirts
of trying to destroy the monarchy as they seek changes in
Thai society. For their part, most red shirts say they
respect the king but want changes in the system he helped
create.
The
politicization of the king’s name “has ensured that the
monarchy cannot play a central conciliatory role any
more,” said Chris Baker, a British historian of Thailand.
More
broadly, the divisions in society may have become too deep
and the anger too hot to reconcile for years to come. Many
analysts say a lasting class conflict has been ignited
between the country’s awakening rural masses and its elite
hierarchy. With the king confined to a hospital since
September with lung inflammation and other ailments, concern
about the future has sharpened. The heir apparent to the
throne, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, has not inherited
his father’s popularity.
But
discussion about the succession and about the future role of
the monarchy are constricted to whispers and forbidden
Internet sites by a severe lèse–majesté law. A 15–year
penalty for anyone who “defames, insults or threatens the
king, queen, the heir apparent or the regent” has been
broadly interpreted in cases brought against writers,
academics, activists, and both foreign and local journalists.
Though
it is the protesters who are pressing for change, including
some who may see a republican form of government in the
future, it is a leading member of the establishment party
that now rules Thailand who put the issue into its plainest
terms.
“We
should be brave enough to go through all of this and even
talk about the taboo subject of monarchy,” said Foreign
Minister Kasit Piromya, in a speech last month that he gave,
significantly, outside Thailand at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies in
Washington. “I think we have to talk about the institution
of the monarchy, how would it have to reform itself to the
modern globalized world.”
He
spoke of Britain and the Netherlands as models, with
constitutional monarchs who play a largely symbolic role.
On
paper at least, those models are not so very different from
the system now in place in Thailand. What sets King Bhumibol
apart is the aura that surrounds him and the faith among
many people that when things are really bad, he will step
forward to save them from themselves.
In
a way, what some Thais are saying now is simply that it is
time for the king’s “children” to grow up and solve
their problems themselves.
“There
might still be people in Thai society that want to see the
king play a role in resolving the crisis,” said Jon
Ungpakorn, a former senator and one of the nation’s most
vocal advocates for democracy.
“But
on the other side, a large section of society realizes that
we should not depend on the monarchy for resolving crises,”
he said. “If we are to be a democratic system, we must
learn to deal with our problems ourselves.”
During
weeks of street demonstrations, protesters have assiduously
asserted their patriotism. But unlike other protests in the
city, there has been a conspicuous absence of portraits of
the king. Among both residents of the northeast, the
country’s rural heartland, and the red–shirt protesters
in Bangkok — many of whom have traveled back and forth in
shifts — a new, less reverent tone has quietly crept into
conversations.
Krasae
Chanawongse, a medical doctor and former government minister
in the northeast who is a strong monarchist, laments that
“many people are talking about destroying the monarchy.”
But
protest leaders insist that they are not challenging the
king but the system that is built around him.
“Real
democracy would have the king at the top, with no elite
class to interfere,” said a protest leader, Nattawut
Saikua, in an interview.
Former
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had built an electoral
base among the country’s poor majority, who also form the
base of the red–shirt protesters, threatening the
traditional supremacy of the old guard. A coup in 2006 that
ousted Mr. Thaksin is believed to have had at least the
tacit approval of the Privy Council and other elites who saw
the prime minister and his base as a challenge to their
power. The red shirts have demanded a new election that
could bring back Mr. Thaksin, now abroad fleeing a prison
sentence for corruption.
Whoever
succeeds King Bhumibol, the veneration and the place the
king holds at the heart of Thai society are unlikely to
survive him.
“In
private discussions people say to each other, ‘What will
we do without him?’ ” said a prominent poet who, like
many people speaking about the monarchy, insisted on
anonymity. “They get disappointed and upset and even
scared about the change in the future.”
As
he has grown older, concerns have risen about divisions and
disputes in society that might erupt once he is gone. It
appears now, with the king no longer playing the role he has
in the past, that those conflicts are already under way.