The King’s wish is his people’s command

23 September 2006

Alex Spillius says that this week’s coup will probably succeed because it has the tacit approval of a popular monarch

Those skills have preserved the monarchy ever since. In 1932 a military coup — in an age where kings began to lose out across the world — overturned the absolute monarchy, turning it into a constitutional one. After 1945, 17 coups, 15 constitutions and 20 prime ministers followed.

Somehow or other the country managed to develop despite this chaos. Tourists began arriving in droves (and are unlikely to be put off by this week’s drama), while the King remaining a much-needed permanent fixture. Now 78, he has seen them come and go: uniformed tyrants, land-grabbing generals and more than a few good democrats along the way. The 1970s and 1980s saw a tragicomic succession of coups and counter-coups and brief respites of civilian rule.

Thailand’s darkest day came in May 1992, when 50 student protesters against the latest military ruler were killed by troops. The King has always been hailed for bringing the country back into the light. He summoned General Suchinda, the prime minister, to the palace and, live on television, ordered him to kneel. The General’s humiliation was complete and his iron rule over. Then came the longest unbroken run of imperfect, corrupt but indisputably elected governments. The media developed into the liveliest and most free in Asia; state agencies gained competence and a measure of transparency, while protest was tolerated.

Thaksin Shinawatra, the man ousted on Tuesday night, broke a developing consensus and was a different proposition from anything before. A telecoms billionaire who only started his political party Thai Rak Thai (‘Thais love Thai’) in 1999, two years before his election, he promised to make Thais rich. His money developed a huge power base. And while his predecessors were guilty of many things, none behaved like a president, or even a king. Thaksin’s great error, made over and over again, was to confuse the country’s good with his own; to judge an attack on him as an attack on the state. There is only one embodiment of the nation and the people, and that is the King. To an army fiercely loyal to the crown, the attack was intolerable.