Thailand prepares to crown King

Maha Vajiralongkorn amid political

tensions
New king, who has taken unusual step of intervening in turbulent Thai politics, will
be crowned in ceremonies over weekend

Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Bangkok

Fri 3 May 2019 03.18 BSTLast modified on Fri 3 May 2019 04.59 BST

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People walk past a portrait of Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn in Bangkok

Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

His imposing image stares out from government buildings, bridges, billboards, shops
and tuk tuks as Thailand prepares for its first coronation in seven decades.

This weekend, two years after he ascended the throne, King Maha Vajiralongkorn,
also known as Rama X, will finally be officially crowned.
The ceremony, which will last three days, is a historic moment for Thailand. The
monarchy is considered the spiritual protector of the people and commands,
particularly among older generations, a deity-like reverence. The death of
Vajiralongkorn’s father, the widely beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 2018 aged
88, was marked by a national outpouring of sorrowand an official year of mourning.

“The coronation is highly significant. Thailand is a country where historical periods

are still thought of in terms of the reigns of monarchs,” said Dr Patrick Jory, a senior
lecturer in south-east Asian history at the University of Queensland.

Volunteers sweep near the Thai royal palace ahead of the coronation. Photograph:
Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images

The three-day ceremony, which begins on Saturday and is expected to cost upwards
of $30m, will be a mix of Buddhist religious ceremonies and Hindu Brahmin rituals,
symbolically marking the king’s consecration as a Devaraja, a “god-king” and the
upholder of Buddhism in Thailand .

Civil servants have been ordered to attend and hundreds of thousands of people are
expected to line the streets wearing royal yellow, while the whole event will be
broadcast across Thai television channels. Preparations began back in April when
water was collected from 76 provinces, blessed in a sacred rite and then held at the
Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

On Saturday, Vajiralongkorn will be anointed with these waters before the ceremony
of assumption will take place at the Grand Palace in Bangkok, where the Great Crown
of Victory, weighing over 7kg, will be placed on his head. The king will then issue his
first command.

Sunday afternoon will see the newly crowned king riding round the city in a
procession to greet the people, passing by some of Bangkok’s most sacred temples
and on Monday afternoon he will then grant a public audience on the balcony of
Suddhaisavarya Prasad Hall in the Grand Palace. It is unclear whether
Vajiralongkorn will use the coronation to make a speech setting out the direction of
his rule, as his father did in 1950.

‘He will monitor and guide policy-making’

When his father died in 2016, Vajiralongkorn requested some time to mourn before
ascending the throne, leaving Thailand without a king for 47 days. Since then, even
after officially being named king, it is only once his coronation is complete that he is
considered to have symbolically taken possession of the kingdom.

For the past two years, Vajiralongkorn has remained mainly in Munich, where he
owns a $13m mansion. He returns to Thailand only for brief official duties, rarely
making public appearances or comments. In a last-minute surprise ceremony on
Thursday he married his fourth wife, former flight attendant Suthida Tidjai, in order
to be able to name her Thailand’s new queen in time for the coronation.

Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida leave after paying their
respect at the statue of King Rama V Photograph: POOL/Reuters

Vajiralongkorn’s lifestyle marks a stark contrast to Bhumibol, who positioned himself

as a man of the people and spent most of his reign travelling up and down the
country, inspiring a level of devotion not yet commanded by his son.

Nonetheless, while he has remained largely absent from Thailand and Thai public
life, over the past two years Vajiralongkorn has taken significant steps to consolidate
his power. This has included assuming personal control of the massive $40bn
wealth of the country’s Crown Property Bureau, making him one of the richest
monarchs in the world. He is also pushing for changes to the Thai constitution to give
the king more executive decision-making powers and greater control over the army
and the appointment of the country’s most senior monks. He is protected from
criticism in the media and public realm by some of the strictest lèse-majesté laws in
the world.

“He will be a very interventionist king,” said Thailand specialist Eugénie

Mérieau. “He might not intervene too often directly in policy-making but he will
monitor and guide policy-making through the control of the senior civil and military
bureaucracy.”

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This has also extended to making his presence felt in the political realm. It is widely
acknowledged that it was the king who pushed the military to hold Thailand’s first
general election in eight years last month, in order to return the country to some
semblance of democracy after five years of military rule.

He twice made his views heard during the election. First he stepped in when his older
sister Princess Ubolratana put her name forward as the prime ministerial candidate
for the Thai Raksa Chart party, stating categorically that he would not allow it. Then
on the eve of the election, he released a statement urging Thais to vote for “good
people”, widely seen as a push for the pro-military ruling party.

With the election results still undeclared and marred by allegations of rigging and
corruption, Thailand is in the midst of mounting political turmoil. People are unsure
whether the coronation will unite or further divide polarised political factions. Some,
such as the new party Future Forward, have set themselves up in opposition to
monarchical influence over government.

“Just as King Vajiralongkorn looks set to rule in the style of the old absolute
monarchs, Thailand’s democratic forces, which have been bottled up for much of the
last 12 years during the protracted political crisis, appear increasingly impatient with
the frequent political interventions of the monarchy and the military,” said Jory.

“How this tension is resolved is the key question of the new reign.”

But on the streets of Bangkok on Friday the anticipation was growing. Sitting outside
her Bangkok picture framing shop, where ornate images of Vajirakongkorn and
faded portraits of Bhumibol stared down from every wall, Pearl Arunchot, 63, said
she was “very excited” about the coronation. “This is history for Thailand. I believe
King Vajiralongkorn will look after and protect the Thai people just as his father King
Bhumibol did.”