A very short visit

The new Thai Prime Minister (General, don’t forget) Surayud Chulanont has literally been barnstorming his nearest neighbors in a "getting to know you" campaign. He’s arriving here tomorrow afternoon, about 4 p.m. For a one-day visit? Of course not – times awasting.

After arrival honors at Villamor Air Base, Prime Minister Surayud will be speeded to Malacañang where he will confer with our Presidenta GMA and, probably, a slew of our top officials.

At 7 p.m., there will be an Official Dinner – stag only – in the State Dining Room. Promptly at 8:30 p.m., the PM will head off for the airport. Then up, up and away to his next destination.

I first learned of the visit when the Palace called Friday afternoon. The President was quickly putting together some friends for the hastily-improvised Dinner which had to be shoehorned into the visiting Thai PM’s very tight schedule.

Surayud, 63, who was appointed last Oct. 1 by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej – at the nomination of the junta which had staged the coup, formerly calling itself the Council for Democratic Reform (CDR) – made his first official trip to next-door Laos on Saturday last week, then to Cambodia the following Sunday, then to Malaysia. He’s on his handshaking odyssey to fellow ASEAN brethren, apparently, to assure everybody that it’s business as usual in Thailand – but not Thaksin-style "business" as previously.

Everybody’s uneasy, even in our region which is full of dictators disguised as democrats and rubber stamp bodies disguised as Parliaments, when a bunch of generals takes over power in a military coup d’etat, particularly one which overthrows an "elected" Prime Minister. But not in Thailand whose people are used to being ruled by generals, marshals and assorted military types and is the Land of Coups aside from being the Land of Smiles.

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Most important of all is that the coup staged by Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratkin, had the blessings of the King.

To be sure, His Majesty didn’t like Thaksin Shinawatra overmuch – the recently deposed PM had been brassy, pushy, and had shown disrespect to the monarchy, hanging on to office by . . . well, buying affection and votes, particularly among the rural population.

My Thai friends say (now that it’s safe perhaps) that Thaksin got to be a telecommunications and electronic billionaire, but he never lost the manners and instincts of a cop. He had started out as a policeman, after all – before multiplying his wealth and "reach" a thousandfold.

Thaksin’s rise and fall ought to be an object lesson to our politicians and power brokers. You can ride roughshod over everybody when you’re up, but the minute you’re down they start investigating you for everything, like the multi-billion baht "kickbacks" poor Thaksin allegedly got for completing that ritzy (and truly gorgeous) Suvarnabhumi Airport.

The military overseers now call themselves the Council for National Security (CNS) and haven’t, to be sure, relinquished all control. For instance they continue to have a hand in everyday affairs, including the nomination of members of the 2,000 member National Assembly and the Constitution Drafting Council, which has 35 members tasked to draw up a new Constitution.

No Cha-Cha "debate," I dare say, is expected to occur over in Bangkok – except for cosmetic purposes. The draft, it was announced, would be finished within 180 days after the Constitution Drafting Council convenes. And voila! a "New" Democracy.

Are any opposition noses out of joint? Apparently, the opposition parties hated and feared Thaksin so much that anything goes for them. For the moment, at least.

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This writer was in Bangkok from September 29 to the day after General Surayud was appointed. The Nation, one of the two leading English language dailies bannered his ascent with a pledge from the new PM: "I’LL GIVE JUSTICE FOR ALL." The streamer had another quote: "At this time I think that I have received the mandate from His Majesty the King so I have to take responsibility." The subhead went on to assert: "Surayud vows to heal a divided nation and promises to return power after a year."

The rival daily (for which I used to write a weekly column), the Bangkok Post simply ran a huge banner headline in typeface normally reserved for declarations of war: "SURAYUD NEW PM." Three subheads contained three pledges from the general: "Self-sufficiency economics get new push over Thaksinomics"; next, "Stress on national reconciliation"; and finally, "Ending southern violence during 12-month term is key goal."

Addressing a press conference at Government House in full white dress uniform, epaulets gleaming and a salad of decorations on his chest, the general asserted that "our future will be better and power will be returned to the people."

What caused unease among critical foreign countries, like the United States, Australia, etc., is the fact that, like putschist Sonthi and their group, Surayud was a former Army Chief. When Thaksin took office, he had moved Surayud to the more pompous-sounding but less influential position of "supreme commander" in 2002, to make way for Thaksin’s own cousin, Gen. Chaisit Shinawatra to become Army Chief of Staff. (Nepotism is alive and well everywhere, including in our home place).

How could the King not give the nod to Surayud? The general was a member of His Majesty’s own Privy Council, and close to the real mastermind and chief backer of the putsch, the President of the Privy Council (General) Prem Tinsulanonda. Prem, who’s at the elbow of His Majesty, was himself a former Prime Minister who assumed power by a coup, but voluntarily stepped down years later. He is respected for having been dignified and correct while in control, and was a sponsor of Coup Leader Gen. Sonthi.

Thai coups follow a certain rhythm like their shadow plays. They collapse if the King repudiates them.

What gives the present longest serving monarch his strength is the fact that he is almost universally revered for his good works and loved by the Thai people.

Yet this was not always so. He had never intended or expected to become King Rama IX, the 9th in the ruling Chakri Dynasty. He was compelled to assume the throne when his elder brother, King Ananda was shot dead in his bed in the Palace under mysterious circumstances.

Lek, as King Bhumibol was nicknamed as a boy, was so close to his brother Nan that it’s said he didn’t smile for years. He had been devastated. One of his biographers, William Stevenson, one of the few who got to know him very well, says in his book, The Revolutionary King, that Lek was "eighteen years old when he replaced Nan. He knew nothing about monarchy and less about Siam. He had dreamed of becoming an engineer or a scientist in America."

Instead, he was snatched out of obscurity to become King Bhumibol, Ninth Rama of Siam, the author narrated. Lek had been born in the USA in 1927. His brother Nan was born in Germany in 1925, just two years older, and had been "asked to be king when he was a nine-year-old schoolboy. Their father the King had been the Seventh Rama, a grandson of the famous King Mongkut, the Fourth Rama, who had been inaccurately portrayed in the Yul Brynner movie, The King and I.

"Papa" as his wife and the children called him, had been studying for a medical degree in the United States when he first met their mother, according to legend an orphan from a Bangkok slum, in Boston, Mass.

"How a Bangkok orphan girl," Steven writes in his picaresque style, "came to be there takes time to unravel. Papa married the unknown orphan and this sent tremors through a royal court obsessed with titles, for Papa was a celestial prince and had been Heir Apparent until his mother fell into disfavor. But you know how it is. Fortune plays a hand in who gets to be King.

Grandfather, King Chulalongkorn (after whom the great university is named, and whom you remember as the cute princeling in Chow Yun Fat’s and Jodie Foster’s version, Anna and the King, had sired a virtual army of sons. "Some were sent for training under the English monarch, or to Moscow to serve the Russian Tsar." King Bhumibol’s father had been commissioned in the Imperial German Navy.

As you can see, Thailand or Siam was not the cloud-cuckoo land on the banks of the Mekong as romantic fictionists used to picture it to be.

In any event, King Ananda had been found dead in January 1946. It was first attempted to create the impression he had died of natural causes. Later, that he had committed "suicide." The military government of the dictator, Marshal Pibul Songgram, was eager to put a cap on the scandal or point fingers. Pibul and his cronies were surprised when the new teen-age King Bhumibol demanded an autopsy and an inquiry. How could King Ananda have shot himself with a Colt pistol if the bullet wound was in the middle of his forehead? Sixteen of the Commission of doctors he appointed stated murder was the most likely cause of death; four insisted on suicide; and two concluded it was an accident.

So there you are. Uneasy forever rests the head that wears the crown.

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In any event, Prime Minister Surayud has a good reputation. Born in 1943 in the central province of Petchaburi, he graduated from the elite Chulachhomklao Royal Military Academy (their PMA) and also underwent training in America.

Appointed Army commander in 1998, he is credited with professionalizing the military and trying to keep it out of politics. Having clashed bitterly with Thaksin over military policy, he had retired in 2003 after more than 40 years in the military. He was chosen thereafter to be among the King’s handpicked body of advisers, the Privy Council.

As for His Majesty, I’ve just finished reading the book written by my former roommate in Harvard (in Wigglesworth Hall), retired Police General Vasit Dejkunjorn. I finally found it translated into English from the original Thai in the Siam Paragon bookshop in my last trip to Bangkok.

Vasit’s book, entitled In His Majesty’s Footsteps, consists of reminiscences about the 12 years he had spent as Royal security officer then as head of the Royal Court Police. One of his "jobs" was to go jogging daily with His Majesty, who was often accompanied by Her Majesty, Queen Sirikit.

He even entered the Buddhist monkhood for 78 days, and was later Top Cop, then Deputy Interior Minister, and finally a Senator. I can say that Vasit was the most self-effacing, courageous and honest cop I ever knew.

He obviously continues to adore the King. In his memoir, he writes: ". . . He still holds to the words he uttered when he became King in 1950: ‘I shall reign with righteousness for the benefit and happiness of the people of Siam’ with his queen by his side. Their majesties have continued to find ways to alleviate the suffering of the Thai people."

Thailand is blessed, indeed, for having such a King – and men to serve him and their nation like Vasit.

When I was a young foreign correspondent, covering Asia – and Thailand – as my parish, Bangkok was light years behind us. Manila and later Makati glittered like a jewel among the cities of the region. Now, alas, we’re eating their dust.

What went wrong? We went wrong, that’s what.

One of the most lovely and venerated flowers in Thailand and in other Buddhist nations is the lotus. For the lotus grows out of mud and polluted waters to burst into beauty. Which is why the Buddhist mantra often goes, "Hail the jewel in the Lotus flower!"

I hope we find inspiration in that analogy. And through faith and effort, build a better, brighter tomorrow out of the muck and slime into which we have descended.