The King Never Smiles by Paul M. Handley

Author:Paul M. Handley [Handley, Paul M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-300-13059-1
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2006-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

14 Who’s the Enemy?

THE COUP OF OCTOBER 1976 GAVE KING BHUMIBOL the chance to create his own government and, for the first time, truly rule his kingdom. With his proxy Tanin Kraivixien as prime minister, his interventions became regular, planned, and purposeful, as the political scientist M.R. Sukhumbhand Paripatra wrote, “predominantly aimed at increasing the monarchy’s political power … as a guarantee against disorder and communism.”1 The throne seemed to be, said Sukhumbhand, “attempting to transform itself into the most dominant institution in the body politic.” That made the backlash against Tanin, when it came after barely a year, all the more stunning to the king. Bhumibol’s politics were soundly rejected by a collaboration of moderate generals, businessmen, bureaucrats, and the general public.

The group that seized power on October 6, 1976, was made up of relatively moderate military officers associated with the late Krit Sivara. One view of the still-murky affair is that they headed off a takeover by extreme rightists connected to Thanom and Praphas, Pramarn Adireksan, and Samak Sunthornvej. The military men called themselves the National Administrative Reform Council, or NARC, with Admiral Sangad Chaloryu, the military supreme commander, as chairman. The power behind Sangad was General Kriengsak Chomanan, a Krit-like moderate in his soldiering and politics. To obtain palace approval for the coup they were obliged to install the king’s choice as prime minister. Bhumibol’s insistence on a civilian suggested both distrust of the NARC generals as well as concern over foreign perceptions of the new government.

As a supreme court judge, Tanin was the kind of bureaucrat the king most appreciated: honest and dedicated, never showing ambition or greed. A second-generation Sino-Thai the same age as King Bhumibol, he studied law in England, married a Danish woman, and was almost more monarchist than the king himself. Tanin was best known for his anticommunism. He wrote books like The Use of Law to Fight Communism and, with university psychology lecturer Dusit Siriwan, hosted a Navapol-sponsored television program called Democracy Talks. On it they constantly harangued communists, students, and progressive politicians as a monolithic threat to the kingdom. Tanin’s 1975 book on the monarchy made him a leading new-generation exponent of Chakri royalism.2 He explained the Chakri king as a patriarch who would deliver a good life to his subjects as long as they remained faithful, docile and orderly. As proof he cited mostly the great reforms of King Chulalongkorn.

He argued ultimately that Thais cannot survive without the monarchy because the Thai race is not defined by genetic or geopolitical traits, but by “Thai-ness,” khwam ben thai, a concept that, Tanin wrote, cannot exist separate from the king. Without the monarchy, he implied, the land and its people would fall into some identity-less perdition of the type communists would bring. Earlier Ninth Reign ideologists Prince Dhani and Srivisarn Vacha had argued that the dhammaraja king is by nature supremely democratic. Tanin went a step further, citing Bhumibol’s three decades on the throne as evidence that institutions like the parliament and voter-based representation, and even constitutional law, were unimportant.

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