a brief political history of Thailand

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Constitutional Monarchy

Posted by Siam at 11:45 AM


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Same Old Royalism Hatches Again

Thongchai WinichakulMadison, Wisconsin.

Source : the Midnight University ,September 10,2005



The fad about Pramuan Rujanaseri's book, The Royal Power, baffles me. It is an overly rhetorical book that happens to come out at the right timing, namely when the public get fed up with the Prime Minister's enormous power and his arrogance.

Among the haphazard thinking and poor argumentation, perhaps one example is enough. "The fact is that His Majesty will endorse every constitution before it can be implemented. His power apparently overwhelms what's stated in the charters." This is a quoted from the article in The Nation, Sept 5, but Pramuan himself is apparently very proud of this argument too.

This is pervert logic. Is a US president above the law since he signs it into law? Does having the authority to veto a law mean he is above the law? NO and NO. How many orders and regulations Pramuan himself signed at the Ministry of Interior? Was he above those regulations? (Perhaps he was.)

It is irresponsible to mislead the public by logical tricks, especially as those tricks lead to the suggestion that the king is above the constitution.

Pramuan's book is nothing but a popularization of the ideas held among the royalists after 1932 who had tried several times to revive the power of the monarch. The fierce struggle over this issue led to the Boworadet Rebellion in 1933 - a civil war of sort that cost dozens of lives, and the abdication of King Prachadhipok (Rama VII) in 1935 after he lost the political fight to have more power under the constitution.

The royalists were subdued during the first Phibun regime (1938-44). After WWII, it was Pridi Phanomyong who allowed the royals to participate in politics (except the immediate family members of the monarch) and returned all the titles and privileges to the royals, including the chief of them, Prince Rangsit or Kromkhun Chainat Narendhorn, who was the last surviving son of King Chulalongkorn and who had been a leader of the royalists.

Pridi's compromise was the result of domestic politics during WWII when many royalists were among the backbone of the Free Thai movement against Phibun. What Pridi didn't anticipate was that the royalists began to plot revenge against him almost immediately, and to revive the king's power - not to the pre-1932 absolute monarchism but along the line that King Rama VII (ditto: the royalists) wanted. The wrongful accusation that Pridi had something to do with the assassination of King Ananda in June 1946 was the dirty work of these people. Pridi suffered tremendously from 1946 to the end of his life at the hand of these royalists in cooperation with the army.

The 1947 coup finished Pridi, even though he tried to come back a few years later. It ended the People's Party's era. Historians usually pay attention to the role of the new generation of the army leaders, such as Phin Choonhavan and Phao Sriyanond. The fact is that the hand prints of the royalists were everywhere in this coup and a few years after, belonging to people from the high princes to the energetic Pridi hunters like the Pramoj brothers, and more.

In March 1946, Prince Dhaninivat (Kromamun Phitthayalap Phrutthayakorn) delivered a historic presentation to the special audience that included the young King Anand, his mother and his brother (the present king). Prince Dhani played an important role in the Privy Council during Rama VII that blocked the king's efforts to "reform" Thai politics. He was a brilliant scholar who after the royalist set back during the first Phibun, spent time on scholarly works. He was among the kings' teachers who quietly groomed the young monarchs from the late 1940s to the 1950s, and also became the President of the Privy Council after Prince Rangsit died in 1951.

Prince Dhani's presentation, "The Old Siamese Conception of the Monarchy", was a short but truly original work of scholarship. It laid the intellectual foundation for the royalist discourse to enhance the royal power in the post-1932 era, and the discourse originated by this article is the framework for the development of the monarchical institution in the past 60 years. (Historians who only see the rise of the monarchy from Sarit's era will find both Sarit's ideology and the king's activities the offshoots of the discourse begun by Prince Dhani. So was Kukrit Pramoj's idea on the monarchy)

ALL the major points in Pramuan's book are merely derivatives of this Dhani's work (via the exegesis by Thongthong Jantharangsu's thesis in 1986). Pramuan only adds his own non-sense argumentation in the up-to-date rhetoric and in timely politics. Nothing more, really.

Pramuan's contribution to this royalist theory of the royal power is to popularize it for consumption by anybody who lacks historical perspective, have short memory, or who want to appear more royalist than the royals themselves. Those people, including famous journalists, are doing a great service to the royalist efforts in trying to make the de facto royal power into de jure.

If concerned citizens of the present generation, like those at the Manager or at this newspaper, are fascinated and convinced by Pramuan's ideas, it reflects how superficial and uncritical they are and how poor their historical knowledge is. For the royalists, their responses to Pramuan's book are predictable. What else we expect them to say, except not saying at all.

Before going crazy with Pramuan's book, we should study how horribly Pridi Phanomyong had suffered at the hands of the royalists especially during 1946-49. The great irony is that some of the advocates for enhancing the royal power tell the story of Pridi working hand in hand with the royals for the enhanced royal power. "Ridiculous" would be my softest comment on these royalist pretenders.

Sorry, I am not Thaksin's supporter. I have written and talked in many places against the current government, especially its hopeless handling of the crisis in the Deep South. But an effort to undermine the government by reviving the old royalism is very dangerous and must be countered. It is easy to see short term benefits for Pramuan, and probably for those journalist critics of Thaksin too. But this kind of short term tactic is extremely short-sighted and very dangerous, unless all of them truly want the royalist regime of democracy in Thailand.

By the way, you write, "more than 1,000 years of absolute monarchy in Thailand". Can you tell me from when to when -- since Thailand was a Happy Valley kingdom at the Altai Mountain in Mongolia when the Thai kings ruled over the whole Asia? With such a statement in your highly educated newspaper, I am not surprised that Pramuan's book is a fad among Thais. As a historian, I plead guilty for failure to make people intelligent about history. The absolute monarchy in Siam lasted less than 60 years -- around the 1870s to 1932 only. Your statement makes the royalist ideas Paleolithic indeed.

Thongchai Winichakul Madison, Wisconsin

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