Forget the junta: does King Vajiralongkorn hold all the cards in Thai politics?

The monarch’s veto of his sister’s bid to become prime minister is a sign of who holds the cards in Thai politics

But it is unclear whether he is using them to influence the ruling junta – or stacking his deck against them

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Few had expected King Vajiralongkorn to come out so openly against his older sibling, Princess Ubolratana. Photo: EPA

Published: 9:03am, 16 Feb 2019Updated: 1:18pm, 16 Feb 2019

THE THAI DRAMA lasted ostensibly less than a day. But the shock waves of the February 8 political earthquake triggered by Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya’s abortive prime ministerial candidacy – vetoed by her younger brother King Maha Vajiralongkorn within hours – are still being felt as the Thai public grapples with the meaning of that moment.

The motivation behind the monarch’s edict remains opaque, as do its consequences. Some say his decision was more a rebuke than a reminder, while others hint that he could be pulling the ruling junta’s strings – or stacking his deck against them.

Never since the end of absolute monarchic rule in 1932 had members of the ruling Chakri dynasty fashioned themselves as politicians.

For good reason, too.

In the decades since that shift, politics in the kingdom had barrelled from stand-off to stand-off, with the military staging 19 coups, 12 of which were successful. Of the Southeast Asian country’s 29 prime ministers in that period, 12 had been from the military.

Bhumibol Adulyadej, the revered father of Vajiralongkorn and Ubolratana, was seen to be – and was revered as being – completely above the fray. The narrative nurtured over the decades was that he was a neutral arbiter among a multitude of competing forces – capitalist, military, the urban landowning elite and rural masses among them.