Thai King’s legacy still strongly felt
Subjects recall Bhumibol’s benevolent reign and late ruler’s fight against poverty
HUAY HOM: Half a century has passed and the king is dead, but the villagers of Huay Hom still haven’t forgotten the day Bhumibol Adulyadej descended by helicopter into their remote, impoverished mountain valley in northern Thailand and changed their lives forever.
The king, they recall, brought electricity and a road that replaced the trail they trudged over for eight hours to reach the nearest roadhead.
Coffee growing was greatly expanded and soon supplanted opium harvests, reaching such high quality that Starbucks is now a steady customer.
The village even reaped profits from the royal-assisted raising of sheep and wool weaving, a rarity in tropical Thailand.
So to thank the king on behalf of Huay Hom’s 72 now well-to-do families, Kamchai Sawankitsomboon travelled more than 750km to Bangkok’s Grand Palace.
There, after standing in line for 13 hours, he prostrated himself before Bhumibol’s coffin – one of nearly 13 million people to do so during a whole year of mourning.
The religious-like fervour surrounding this outpouring of grief stems from many things: nostalgia for the past, a very personal connection that millions of Thais felt they had forged with their monarch, and gratefulness, as in Kamchai’s case, for the decades Bhumibol put in working on behalf of the country’s have-nots.
Regarded as a stabilising figure amid political turbulence and headlong modernisation, the king’s passing on Oct 13, 2016 also evoked anxiety about what comes next as the country sees the end of an era.
With his son King Maha Vajiralongkorn, a yet untested mon- arch, on the throne and an entrenched military regime promoting a meandering “roadmap to guided democracy”, several Thai academics at a recent international conference said “the Bhumibol consensus” has been replaced by “politics of uncertainty”.
“Thais will never be the same again as Thailand will never be the same,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
Thais born when Bhumibol’s reign began 70 years ago who are still alive today have known 30 prime ministers and a succession of coups, constitutions and economic upheavals.
But until last year they had only one king who many credit with steering the country through these crises and its evolution from a poor rural society to a modern US$400bil (RM1.69 trillion) economy.
Oraboon Imchai Bulut, a young businesswoman, vividly remembers seeing the king’s portrait on the cover of her first school note- book. A friend told her how her grandfather’s eyesight was saved by an operation sponsored by the king.
Waiting overnight to view the coffin, Oraboon brought along a photograph of her deceased father in what she said was “a last chance to say goodbye”.
“People in their 40s, 50s and 60s still feel very much related, involved and attached to his reign,” Thitinan said.
“The vast majority of Thais more or less collectively feel the same: we are grateful for the reign.”
Some criticism of the late monarch has surfaced in recent years.
Some analysts and activists say the king impeded the progress of the country’s fledgling democracy by wielding too much power and often siding with the military and other conservative forces.
Bhumibol’s near deification, critics say, has in part been driven by royalist propaganda and by laws outlawing insults to the monarchy.
Others have noted that a society relying too heavily on one individual rests on fragile foundations.
But such commentary has been subdued within Thailand as the nation prepares for the final farewell to Bhumibol, who died at the age of 88 after a prolonged illness.
Bhumibol himself may prove to be the last monarch of his kind, someone embedded in the national psyche through his overreaching sway and historical circumstances.
“It was an extraordinary time and he was just an exceptional individual suited for it,” Thitinan said.
“Now we have to find a system not based on one individual. It cannot be the same as before.” — AP