Servicios de negocio

In light of the omens just discussed, the attitude and achievement of the King in 1992 become almost predictable, and one is tempted to pass on quickly to the ‘crowning glories’ of 1997 when the bloody trauma of Thai democracy was exorcized by a quite uniquely democratic, new Constitution with the King’s blessing. However, a word or two must first be inserted about two tricky questions: the King’s apparent hesitancy in defending democracy until the anti- democratic forces have overplayed their hand or are in disarray; and the persistence of the lèse-majesté law and cases arising from it.

In the first connection, the King did not withhold his retrospective sanction for the 1991 coup – which, like others before it, required a retrospectively legitimized suspension of the Constitution in order to conduct government provisionally without parliament, not to mention amnesty for illegal actions undertaken in seizing power.37 The royal sanction was duly forthcoming, even though the King was outraged by the cynicism of the coup leaders in attending an audience on the day itself, without informing His Majesty;38 and even though the coup was rather manifestly the last desperate throw of a military elite that saw its political power eroding beyond recall.39 Moreover, when, the following year, General Suchinda as non-elected Prime Minister turned the guns on the crowds demonstrating against himself, the King seemed painfully slow to act. Nevertheless, it is highly credible that the King was actually being kept in the dark by the military during the hours in question.40

With regard to the second dimension – the lèse-majesté law and its ramifications – it has often appeared that the King, or at least the court, were loath to intervene to stop cases brought for clearly opportunistic reasons by factional interests claiming to ‘defend the monarchy’, or to grant early pardons when defendants were found guilty and imprisoned. Is it not surprising that these interests have been allowed to get away with their charade of protecting the monarchy, when it is so clearly their own lack of legitimacy that puts them in need of the monarchy as a protective camouflage for themselves?41 The most gracious explanation the present writer can intuit is that the King knew the

Thailand 147 importance of ancient charisma as the deeper foundation of his authority, and that this should be maintained in the eyes of the simple folk in the interests of monarchy’s preservation – self-preservation being the most elementary condition of any kind of political effectiveness in support of constitutionalism or democracy in the long term. It might be very difficult for uneducated Thais to grasp the concept of ‘manipulation’ of the monarchy by ‘selfish interests’ which claim to be defending it, and the King might appear ungracious to his loyal servants if refusing to be ‘defended’ in this way.

But another argument is that the more the monarchy has become an object of tawdry mass consumption as the central symbol of nationhood (thus, less charismatic in the authentic sense), the more (paradoxically) it has had to be defended from criticism in the name of national security.42 Certainly there are signs of a cynical – yet politically dynamic and apparently untouchable – commercialism in new historical invention such as the recent cult of Princess Suvana Kanlaya, an elder sister of King Naresuan of Ayut’ia (reigned 1590– 1605) and notable patriotic heroine.43 Even the Department of Fine Arts, when ‘investigating’ such revelations, has to show some political sensitivity, notwith- standing the new discourse of Thai academic historiography which understands very well how history writing has served the court, or other vested interests, in the past.44 Among the more bizarre factors enhancing the sacrality of monarchy through ‘commodification’ is the government’s assiduous promotion of tourism. The Bicentennial of the Chakri Dynasty in 1982 was ‘big business’ in terms of foreign-exchange earnings, and resulted in tourism (plus cultural promotion abroad) getting an even higher profile in government thinking and organization in subsequent years.45

Still, the greatest demand for state ceremonies has been generated – and has to be satisfied – among the Thai public itself. Hence, in part, the eleven-month lying-in-state of the King’s mother, culminating in a royal-style cremation (although the ‘Princess Mother’ was a commoner) in 1996, and the sumptuous celebrations of the King’s Golden Jubilee in the same year, which continued long enough to appear to merge with His Majesty’s Sixth Cycle Anniversary (his 72nd birthday on 5 December 1999). Whereas in 1977 the only tangible cult impinging on the consciousness of one visiting foreigner was that of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), celebrated at the Equestrian Statue each 23 October,46 eighteen or nineteen years later everything had been surpassed if not quite eclipsed by the effective cult of the living monarch.47

Thus, surrounded by an intensifying mystique, the King is both liberated for potential action and possibly constrained to honour sacral expectation when under attack, real or imagined. Even the ‘correct’ view of his more secular role as guardian of the Constitution and guarantor of political order – what has been called the ‘total standard view’ of the contemporary monarchy – comprises some almost transcendental elements and has taken on, as a whole, a quality of myth over and above the empirical reality of periodic intervention. In such capacity, the ‘total standard view’ can only be challenged at the risk of penalty.48 Meanwhile, the King is constantly enticed towards a greater subjective sense of

his special gifts by the serious current of intellectual opinion which sees Thailand’s salvation in an even stronger monarchical role than has ever evolved under democracy – indeed a return to a modified form of absolute monarchy.49 Given such pressures, and given also the King’s deep sense of historic duty, not to say prerogative, as heir to the reforming Chakri dynasty, it speaks highly for his innate virtue that he has managed to preserve a still essentially modest and rationalistic definition of the royal duties.50

In any case, if we stay alert to currents of change in Thailand amidst the proverbial continuities, we will notice (a) the King’s quite early intercession in 1984 to have the charges against the celebrated intellectual and social critic, Sulak Sivaraksa, withdrawn, in the classically bogus prosecution of his critical Thai book, Unmasking Thai Society – essentially part of the power play at that time of military ‘withdrawal symptoms’ and the career anxieties of General Arthit.51 Furthermore, we will notice (b) the historic dismissal, in 1995, of the most famous lèse-majesté case of all: that which was brought against Sulak by General Suchinda, mainly for accusing the General himself, in a speech at Thammasat University in August 1991, of having committed lèse-majesté by his unauthorized abrogation in February 1991 of a Constitution promulgated by the King. No doubt, it was easy enough in this case for the court to take the view, as it did, that Sulak had not been criticizing the monarchy, but the leader of a coup, and that Sulak had a democratic right to criticize the leader of the government of the day, since that leader had already stepped down amidst general ignominy. Arguably also, a unique opportunity was missed to deliver a judgement on Sulak’s key thesis: that all military government since 1932 has involved offence against the majesty and sanctity of the Throne (in whose name all coups, like every lèse-majesté case, are routinely justified), because each overthrown Constitution existed ultimately only with the authority of the King.52 Yet all this being said, it would be rather surprising if the judge was out of step with the sentiment of the King in such a high-profile judgement. And, inasmuch as Thai law was slowly but surely being moved forward, this was surely in a direction which the King himself approved and desired.

A token, from a different sphere, of the royal family’s commitment to national salvation through democracy is its engagement on the side of Thailand’s environment, where the stakes are high and the despoilers as willing to resort to graft and violence as in any other country now losing its forests and its wildlife. (This was one important theme of Sulak’s speech at Thammasat.) Evidence of royal commitment had been seen in the funerary honours accorded by the King to Seub Nakhasathien, the forestry official and game warden at the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary who committed suicide in 1990 after failing to fulfil his mission of conservation (he believed he had a 6,000 baht price on his head at the time of his death).53 The Thung Yai forest has a special symbolism in the history of struggles for justice, as a student campaign against army poaching of protected species there was one of the first of the actions which led cumulatively to the fall of the Thanom/Prapat dictatorship in 1973.54

Thailand 149 Meanwhile, the appearance that the King was moving into a more active phase of democratic commitment in 1995 is reinforced by his early, indirect, criticisms of the money-based elected government of provincial-strongman Banharn Silpa-archa.55 This may constitute ‘circumstantial evidence’ of a sort for the King’s likely, moral support for the judgement acquitting Sulak – who is a constitutional democrat upholding the sanctity (though not divinity) of the throne, whereas the money-driven party bosses are prone to bring both democracy and monarchy into disrepute in spite of paying loud lip service to the sanctity (and even divinity) of the throne. It is only sad that since 1995 Sulak has continued to advertise, for foreign consumption, the King’s ‘imprisonment in ceremony’, the heavy thrall of the lèse-majesté law, and the ancient taboos on touching the King’s or the Queen’s bodies, as if these are unchanging realities.56