The king never smiles, p.53
The King Never Smiles, page 53
Sangwal, on the other hand, deteriorated until she finally died on July 18. In her death, with the help of the palace promotion machine, she became more alive and consequential than ever before. Although well known by Thais, Sangwal never played much of a direct role in their lives. She lived in Switzerland through the 1980s, and after she returned permanently she was rarely seen outside her Doi Tung estate. But magazines frequently showed her growing flowers and doing needlepoint, and published her thoughts on Buddhism.
Upon her death the palace set out to canonize her as the equivalent of a blue-blooded queen and a figure of bodhisattva status. It served both to expand the pantheon of modern royals for the public to venerate, and also to reassert that, her common birth notwithstanding, her blood was pure and virtuous as any Chakri. When she died, the king set a normal 100-day mourning period, and government employees were asked to wear black for 15 days. The supreme patriarch led mass merit-making at Sanam Luang. Her body underwent Brahman bathing obsequies in an inner Grand Palace hall, where the king and queen sprinkled lustral water on her, and Bhumibol placed on her head a chada, the traditional spiring Siamese crown. Her jewel-studded funerary urn was emplaced in a throne hall for paying respects. There visitors saw the urn set beneath a seven-tiered royal umbrella, reserved for the very highest royals but the king, who had nine tiers.
A massive campaign glorifying Sangwal’s life was launched. Government offices organized commemorations, and police stations were ordered to hold formal merit-making rites on the seventh, fiftieth, and hundredth days after her death. The police posthumously promoted her to the rank of general, and the Border Patrol Police planned to build statues of her at each BPP camp.28
When the throne hall was opened to public mourning, each day hundreds of people, mostly elderly women, came to offer prayers and witness, late each after noon, the king and queen themselves sitting while monks chanted. In keeping with tradition, various people and groups close to Sangwal and the royal family would sponsor a day of mourning, providing the alms for monks and leading prayers. Before the number of condolers tapered off, the palace and government prodded other groups to sponsor prayers in the palace, and to accommodate them the mourning period was extended indefinitely. Government offices, corporations, and civic associations each sponsored a mourning session, their hundreds of employees and members compelled to sit in front of the urn in meditation. It gave people the rare opportunity to witness their own king and queen up close, likewise praying, or the king working hard on traffic plans.
This went on for the rest of the year, with the royal news portraying it as a spontaneous outpouring for the princess mother. The sponsored mourning grew on itself, understood as a very meritorious practice. It took on the air of something more transmundane as auspicious signs and stories were noted. Although it was the rainy season anyway, the Bangkok Post reported that on July 19, just before the bathing rites, “the overcast sky broke and the rain poured down, as if to suggest that the almighty had acknowledged the passing of the princess mother and shared the grief of the people.”29
A supernatural story was related about her death by a famous monk, Phra Pipit Thammasunthorn of Wat Suthas, who said he was told it by the king. Five years before she actually died, Sangwal said she felt tired and was ready to leave the world. Her words made Bhumibol think of the Lord Buddha, who himself told a disciple that he would die within three months. The disciple could have asked the Buddha to remain on earth, but he didn’t, and so the Buddha died. So Bhumibol begged Sangwal to remain alive for the sake of her children and the Thai people. She stayed on for five more years. When she died, the king had also related, he and Galyani were holding her hands. The electrocardiograph no longer showed a pulse. But as he thought of the things he hadn’t said to her, the machine miraculously showed her heart beating again. When Galyani’s daughter entered and grasped her hands, Sangwal’s pulse came alive again. They understood she was finally saying goodbye. The graph of the machine proved the miracle, Bhumibol told Phra Pipit.30
For months on radio and television, meanwhile, there was such an intense and unprecedented bombardment of programs commemorating Sangwal that even some in royal circles openly criticized the excess. On his birthday that December, Bhumibol said that it was because Thais could uniquely recognize her goodness that the kingdom remained at peace, while war raged in the Balkans. “We were glad to have a mother who was loved by everyone. They all considered her ‘Grandmother.’ … All those who call her ‘Grandmother’ are thus our nephews and nieces…. Even in her demise, she has contributed to the country…. When people from all lands and all tongues, even those who dislike Thailand, see this unique situation, this deep respect for the one who deserves it, they cannot help liking this country.”31
Sangwal’s cremation was set for March 10, 1996, based on auspicious signs: palace astronomers said the comet Hyakutake would be visible in the Libra constellation, the sign under which Sangwal was born.32 The religious affairs department recruited 34,604 men to ordain in her honor, for the number of days she lived. The youngest of the crown prince’s sons ordained too. For the cremation, the palace and government issued lengthy brochures explaining the cosmic and dynastic significance of every uniform, decoration, position, and motion. Broadcast media would carry the entire event by pool, each step narrated in hushed tones by Thongthong Chandrangsu. Besides the official palace cameramen, no media were allowed near except BBC television, which received special access for filming a documentary that the palace expected would glorify Sangwal to world audiences.
The day after the cremation confirmed her magical elevation to queen status, when her relics were installed by the king in the Grand Palace’s Chakri Throne Hall and in Wat Phra Kaew, housing the Emerald Buddha, honors reserved only for top royals. The funeral was also an occasion to raise money for the royal charities. Some $12 million was collected over the eight months her body lay in state, to build a hospital in her name. The government minted coins with her visage, well promoted in the funeral broadcast, to raise a target $6 million. On the day of the cremation, boxes placed around Sanam Luang collected over $160,000. The Ministry of Education also collected an unreported amount, which it said would be used to construct statues of Sangwal around the country. For the next few years, books, documentaries, CD-ROMs, and cassette tapes were produced, marketed, and shown exalting her life. The palace was determined to establish not just her royal rank but her spiritual achievement as no less than the king’s own.
The consecration of Sangwal quickly folded into the celebration of the reign’s 50th year. Nearly every event over 24 months was declared “in honor of the king’s golden jubilee.” Prince Vajiralongkorn oversaw a project to carve a gigantic Buddha image into a Chonburi hillside in the king’s honor. Princess Sirindhorn presided over an international conference on vetiver grass, which the king had promoted (palace publicity often said discovered) as useful in conservation. Supreme Patriarch Yana sangworn led a project to plant sacred bho trees in the king’s honor at the kingdom’s 30,000 temples.
Huge sums were spent, in government budgets and from businesses. Not all of it was straightforward. Businessmen raided shareholder funds to demonstrate their own loyalty. One report said that senators had 500 baht a month deducted from salaries, to a total of 8.7 million baht, for the celebrations and royal projects.33 Another later showed that Premier Banharn, in raising 999 million baht for the king’s flood-control projects, actually borrowed much of it from the state-owned Krung Thai Bank.34
The hubris of the economic boom and the stock market peaking at the beginning of 1996 supported some lavish gifts to the king. A prominent jeweler acquired a gigantic 6.3-kilogram blue topaz to have cut with 950 facets (symbolizing the 9th reign, 50th year) and presented to the throne. The Thai military, using public funds, produced a new royal mace made with 700 grams of gold and 518 diamonds and other gems. The most extravagant gift came from the most wealthy Sino-Thai businessmen, led by Bangkok Bank’s Chatri Sophonpanich and coordinated by Prem. They bought for an unknown price the world’s largest cut diamond, a 546-carat yellow-brown gem from South Africa that Thais noted proudly was bigger by 15.4 carats than the Cullinan Star of Africa in Britain’s crown jewels. Underscoring their view of the king’s sacrality, the businessmen reportedly had the diamond consecrated by the Thai supreme patriarch, the Thai Muslim patriarch, and Pope John Paul II in Rome.
Two other lavish expenditures were noteworthy. Some $8 million in government and donated funds was used to commission new gem-studded gold vestments for the Emerald Buddha. And later in 1996 the government presented the king with a 2.5-kilogram gold and jeweled naga image, while naming him the Father of Water Resource Management. Several thousand books heralding his achievements in hydrology were distributed to schools around the country.35
The week of the jubilee was jam-packed with events honoring the Ninth Reign. Television was filled with documentaries, talk shows, and even game shows built around the monarchy. On June 7 all stations broadcast live a fund-raiser for royal charities, with Banharn and his wife kicking off the donations with 10 million baht, or $400,000.36 Finally, on the morning of June 9, 25 caparisoned elephants carried 50 men to a royal temple to be ordained in the king’s honor. The king performed private rituals to honor his ancestors and his brother Ananda, whose death 50 years earlier that morning remained an unspoken, unsolved mystery. Around the nation many merit-making rituals were undertaken, and that evening, before fireworks were launched, one million candles blessed by the supreme patriarch were lit together at the astrologer-designated auspicious time of 19:19.
The celebrations continued sporadically through the rest of the year, and all seemed to go off without a hitch, though not without a vigilant palace staff ensuring it. Officials complained, even to foreign news offices, when stories or photographs didn’t put the royal family in the best light. When the Nation published an article on Chitrlada Palace that described the lushly planted compound as an “island of green in an ocean of gray … a world apart from the teeming streets of Bangkok,” the palace berated the editors for making the king sound isolated in luxury from his suffering subjects.37 More seriously, early in 1996 the leading political and social affairs show on television, Mong Tang Moom, was canceled for addressing controversial topics. The show’s host said Prem had ordered it off the air so that it didn’t embarrass any of those in power.38
Still tireless in her busy schedule of charity operations, rural visits, society galas, and pleasure travel, Queen Sirikit wasn’t left out in all the royal promotion. The government garnered numerous honors for her from both Thai and foreign institutions. Each August at her birthday there were grand balls and demonstrations of adoration countrywide. Thousands of schoolgirls would be brought to the Royal Plaza to meditate as a group for her, dressed in white like nuns and holding candles. Buddhist amulets and statues were cast in her name and sold to raise money for charities.
For her 1992 birthday the tycoons in her regular retinue—banker Banyong Lamsam, industrialist Prayuth Mahagitsiri, Charoen Siriwatanapakdi, Dhanin Chiaravanont, and Thaksin Shinawatra—donated millions to build a Queen Sirikit wing at Chulalongkorn Hospital, to stand equally with the Bhumibol wing. For the same occasion, the Siam Society raised $1 million to fabricate, using 30 kilograms of pure gold, a massive Buddha’s footprint, an extremely sacral icon of Buddhism, in Sirikit’s honor. The project was inaugurated by Prince Vajiralongkorn, and the king and the supreme patriarch consecrated the completed footprint in June 1994, installing it in Wat Phra Kaew. One hundred small replicas were also cast for distribution to members of the royal family and to temples around the country in the queen’s name.39
But Queen Sirikit aspired to be not just a complement to her husband but her own heroic figure. She wanted to be known as a modern incarnation of ancient Siam’s official first heroine, the 16th-century Ayutthaya queen Suriyothai. In legend Suriyothai was the beautiful consort of the embattled King Chakkrabhat who, in 1549, dressed up as a man to go forth on elephant-back to fight Burmese invaders. She died in the battle but saved her husband. There is little historical evidence for the story but, revived by palace historians in the Fifth and Sixth reigns, the Suri-yothai tale had become standard history-book fare.
Sirikit was said to imagine herself an avatar of the ancient queen, and Bhumibol went along with it, in 1989 naming his Ayutthaya water conservation and flood-prevention project the Sri Suriyothai Park. For Sirikit’s 60th birthday, the king had the park bestowed to Sirikit as her own. The army paid special homage to Suri-yothai’s beauty and heroism in a son-et-lumiere drama for Sirikit’s brand-new Ayutthaya palace; the government commissioned a Buddha image named after Suriyothai; and a new Hua Hin army base was likewise named for the legendary queen. The Suriyothai myth grew, propelled by Sirikit’s visits to the supposed battle site to make offerings. In his 1995 birthday speech, Bhumibol credited the legendary queen for the success of the Ayutthaya flood-prevention project. The next year, a massive statue of Queen Suriyothai on elephant-back was erected in the park and inaugurated by Sirikit.
The mid-1990s saw new benchmark interpretations of the monarchy, each an attempt to bridge the gap between the new forces of society and the traditional Chakri throne. Each advanced the idea of the king’s unknowable wisdom and unmatchable virtue, and that he embodied whatever democracy the country needed.
The first new interpreter was royal-projects aide Sumet Tantivejakul. Speaking on several occasions on the king’s rural development efforts, Sumet described how the king follows the Buddhist principles of industriousness, sacrifice, and selflessness in seeking to end poverty. This came across especially in a large-format book, Thailand’s Guiding Light, published for the 1996 anniversary. It describes Bhumibol as working hard to overcome the “forces of greed represented by the collaboration of unscrupulous private investors, politicians and public officials.” In a chapter identifying the king as “Environmental Activist,” Sumet explains the king’s environmentalism as a superior ability to balance the needs of the people and the environment. The king is more effective than the one-dimensional, insensitive bureaucracy because he uniquely “looks at problems in a holistic manner … [and] never lets costs or academic correctness get in the way of his determination to help poor villagers. He does not think people’s lives and happiness can or should be measured in terms of money or academic principles.”40
Acknowledging the validity of some opposition to large-scale dams, Sumet insisted the king was well ahead of environmental activists. His projects are usually small-scale, and it is only because people have ignored his solutions to drought and flooding for years that problems continue. After the large floods in 1983, Sumet said, the king proposed solutions, but “no one paid heed.”
One demand of environmental and social activists of the 1990s was that major projects be reviewed in public hearings, which the bureaucracy and politicians strongly opposed. Sumet argued that the king already fulfilled this role, so that formal hearings were unnecessary. In his visits to rural villages, Sumet said, “His Majesty has been holding public hearings for the last 30 years…. He urges people to say what they really feel.”41 Such informal consultations, Sumet had said earlier, justified the Pasak and Tha Dan dams. In Thailand’s Guiding Light, Sumet further explained that the king spent hours and hours talking to villagers. “It’s an untainted process of public hearing, unorganized and natural.” For Sumet, this was democracy.
Erstwhile premier Anand Panyarachun was an interpreter of a different sort—necessarily so, because some of his personal views were at odds with the king’s. In a newspaper interview and in a speech published in Thailand’s Guiding Light, Anand reiterated the 800-year-old basis of the king’s benevolent, paternalistic rule in the Sukhothai dhammaraja tradition.42 The kings knew their subjects well, Anand noted, and the Chakri kings, and Rama IX specifically, protected the nation while fostering progressive change. “Thailand is now a constitutional monarchy and a country aspiring to become a newly developed society, but the traditional principles of righteous Buddhist kingship and kingly virtues remain of paramount importance to the present monarchy. His majesty has displayed, and continues to display, a profound understanding of constitutional kingship as well as the traditional sources and symbols of Thai monarchical tradition.”
Even the deeply rationalist Anand found something uncanny in this. Bhumibol, he noted, “was not born to be king. As such, he had little time to be groomed to be one.” In politically treacherous postwar Thailand, he traveled the entire country to get to know his land and people. “He would know every river, every stream, every creek, every mountain and every pass. He is a good map reader,” said Anand. This astuteness launched Thailand to development. “After a state visit to a foreign country, his majesty inspired the then government to embark on the first national economic and social development plan.”43
Although less enthusiastic at the mystical sources of Bhumibol’s brilliance, Anand still seemed to acknowledge the king’s attainment of enlightenment. “The king is a man of tremendous self-discipline. When he went into the monkhood, he studied religion very religiously and now he is a man of self-discipline. He understands reality of life. He knows that certain things cannot be changed. And he has … no ‘atta,’ he has no ‘ego.’ He has no sense of self-importance…. He is completely detached…. [T]o be a really good Buddhist, you must dispossess yourself of all these attachments …. You only do it for the good of the community, for the public good. That is how he conducts his daily life.”
