King’s legacy still felt strongly as Thailand bids goodbye
HUAY HOM (AP) — 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 significantly 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.
To thank the king on behalf of Huay Hom’s 72 now well-to-do families, Kamchai Sawankitsomboon traveled more than 750 kilometers (466 miles) to Bangkok’s Grand Palace.
There, after queuing for 13 hours, he prostrated himself before Bhumibol’s coffin — one of nearly 13 million people to do so during a year of mourning that will all but come to a close with the late king’s cremation next week.
The religious-like fervor 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 stabilizing figure amid political turbulence and headlong modernization, the king’s passing on Oct. 13, 2016 also evoked anxiety about what comes next as the country confronts the close of an era.
With his son King Maha Vajiralongkorn, a yet untested monarch, 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to guided democracy,” several Thai academics at a recent international conference said “the Bhumibol consensus” has been replaced by “politics of uncertainty.”
“Thai people will never be the same again as Thailand will never be the same again,” Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak said.
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 had only one king who many credit with steering the country through these crises and presiding over evolution from a poor rural society to a modern $400-billion economy.
Many were imprinted with his image at an early age. His persona became a part of their lives.