The King Smiles Sometimes?

Some of you may have heard of a book called The King Never Smiles, the first published on the subject of King HRM Bhumibol Adhulyadej of Thailand. Released in 2006, and is highly sensitive material here of course.

Now for the surprise. This post isn't really about the book. Sorry. Lots of people have written about it, and I plan to read it before I comment on it. This post really is about tonight's successful drinking session with some friends, that ever so lightly touched upon politics.

A quick disclaimer. My level of Thai is inadequate for proper understanding, let alone analysis when words such as rattatammanoon are bandied about.

My fetish question here - after or before a few beers - is « What do you reckon will happen when the King passes away? ». The answers vary in scope or depth, but all betray serious angst. The son lacks charisma. Morals. Stature. There will be big problems for Thailand then.

The answer I got tonight was revolution. Great. We old democrats (heehee) are used to having the royals killed in the course of revolutions. Of course, my company consisted of 2 human rights activists, 1 labour activist, 1 art teacher, 1 slightly inebriated Lao (my personal favourite). Revolution would be the solution, as long as it is bloodless. A classic.

The conversation then branched upon freedom of expression (the constitution that is being drafted doesn't seem to make provisions for such luxuries), privatisation of the education (that seems to be happening right now) and that book I mentioned. Does he ever smile? It's true, on the gorgeous portraits, surrounded by his beautiful wife and dutiful children, he is the essence of virtuous seriousness.

Since it is so difficult to find out what goes on inside the palace, the one of the human rights people pointed out that HRM BA must smile at home, this contention sparked a huge debate, some of our lot seriously doubting the possibility. My hypothesis that he probably smiles when he plays music was, I believe, mistaken for « gimme more beer please » (that's what I got), so my contribution to the issue was minimal.

At this point, of course, WE were all smiling. I learnt that the political spectrum in Thailand is indeed more vast than the Thai Rak Thai. There is a Maoist party, a Marxist/Leninist party. The labour guy kindly volunteered that the former wants to kill the state and the latter just replace it. To date, it is still unclear how Mao can still have a following, pressing the point in Thai was a biiit difficult. Please feel free to comment, however.

The plan is to meet again in order to give more depth to these perspectives, so stay in touch for more if you like posts without head, tail, structure or sense!

Cheerio!