All over the Kingdom of Thailand its citizens are mourning the death last Thursday of their most revered monarch, Bhumibol Adulyadej (King Rama IX). Bhumibol (pronounced “pumi-pon”) had been the world’s longest reigning monarch (June 1946-October 2016) and the end of his long, long reign casts uncertainty over the coup-prone country’s immediate future.

The longevity and stability of the Boston-born Bhimibol’s monarchical rule in Thailand has been the glue that has held this turbulent country together over the last seventy years❈. The sense of uncertainty is intensified by doubts the Thai people have about his designated successor, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. What Thais know of Vajiralongkorn’s questionable past private life and periodical bizarre behaviour means his popularity with the people trails distantly behind that of his beloved father … it remains to be seen with the passage of time whether he will be able to muster up anything like Bhumibol “the Great’s” degree of baramee (accumulated merit) among Thais.

King Ananda of Siam

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The event of King Bhumibol’s death stirs memories of the extraordinary and unexpected circumstances by which he became the king of Thailand at aged 18. In June 1946 the monarch Ananda Mahidol, Bhumibol’s older brother, died of a single gunshot to the head whilst in the royal palace. The king’s mysterious death remains much speculated about but unresolved to this day.

Initially the Bangkok press reported Ananda’s death as accidental (he was known to be “a fancier of firearms” like the Colt.45 that killed him), but international newspapers soon suggested the possibility that Ananda had suicided. To buttress this perspective of the shooting, the papers ran the line that Ananda had been despondent about his mother’s vetoing of a blossoming romance with a Swiss fellow student at the University of Lausanne, and that he was feeling the burden of being the reluctant ruler of his country[1].

Inquiry or cover up?
To stem this unpalatable conjecture the government set up a special commission of inquiry to investigate the death. The commission’s physicians discounted the likelihood of suicide (the angle of entry of the bullet was all wrong), finding rather that the King had been assassinated. As a criminal case however it had already been compromised … before police investigators had arrived at the royal chambers several people including probably the king’s mother had handled the weapon and the whole scene had been tidied up[2].

Rival Thai politicians pointed the finger at each other, many of the accusations centred on Prime Minister Pridi Phanomyong who was forced into permanent exile … a politically motivated move which set back the burgeoning impetus for democracy in Thailand and paved the way for the establishment of ongoing military, authoritarian rule[3].

Short of direct evidence implicating Phanomyong in the act, the military arrested the late King’s private secretary (a national senator) and two of his pages, and eventually tried them for regicide on trumped-up charges supposedly implicating them in a communist conspiracy. Through a series of trials the case dragged on over several years before they were found guilty. After pressure from the army chief the three were executed in 1955. Its transparently clear that the executed men were sacrificed as convenient scapegoats … and sacrificed by the very top level of the Thai elite! Intriguingly King Bhumibol later opined that they were not responsible for the crime, yet, pointedly, he made no attempt following their sentencing to use his royal prerogative to save them from the gallows.

Although it was evident to all in the royal court that the two Thai brother-princes were the best of friends, some observers (including Lord Mountbatten) voiced the opinion that Bhumibol himself was responsible for the death of the young king, whether intentionally or by accident. If Bhumibol had deliberately shot his brother, no one has ever been able to establish a feasible or plausible motive for such action by the young prince[4] … but whether Bhumibol fired the fatal shot in what was a tragic accident is another question.

Another contemporary theory, this one self-death-by-accident, was advanced by the brothers’ cousin Prince Subha Svasti (at the time also Minister at Large in the Government of Siam). Prince Subha explained to the media that Ananda had the habit of sleeping with a loaded revolver beside his bed, and often used it to take potshots at birds through the open window. The prince theorised that the young king reached for it as he awoke but the gun discharged, fatally wounded himself in the motion[5].

Various other theories have been put forward to explain Ananda’s violent death, none of them convincing. Among the more implausible explanations was that from an American journalist that the king was assassinated by a Japanese agent and war criminal[6]. Over the years a number of books on the episode, written from outside Thailand, have surfaced but strict censorship within the country has made it an offence to possess or reproduce these books[7].

Grand Palace, Bangkok

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Another factor in Thai society that suffocates efforts to get to the heart of the enigma is Thailand’s draconian law of lèse majesté which harshly punishes anyone within the country found guilty of defaming or insulting the monarchy. This law has been liberally used by Thai governments (increasingly so) to silence and intimidate dissenting opinion in society[8]. It also has meant that Thais who discuss or read literature about the unresolved circumstances of what happened in 1946 are at risk of imprisonment under the law.

Bhomibol was (as far as is known) the last person to see the king alive that disastrous day, and with the death of the 88-year-old billionaire king this week, he was the last person alive who might have been able to explain, finally, how his brother died. Whether Ananda died because brothers were playing around with the gun and Bhomibol accidentally shot him in the head (a view that has widespread currency), or by some other means, Bhomibol it seems has taken that sombre secret with him into nirvana[9].

┄┅ ┈┄┉ ┄┅ ┈┉┄ ┅┈┅ ┉┄ ┅┈
❈ the vast sweep of Rama IX’s reign encompassed 29 changes of Thai government, 16 coups and 16 distinct constitutions

[1] G King, ”Long Live the King’, The Smithsonian, 28-Sep-2011, www.smithsonian.com

[2] ‘Mystery still lingers over death of Thai King Bhumibol’s brother’, Weekend Australian, 15-Oct-2016, www.theaustralian.com.au

[3] Andrew Marshall has argued that Bhumibol was more comfortable working with military regimes in Bangkok, exhibiting a contempt for civilian leaders of the country, eg, his implicit public criticism of high profile prime minister and telecommunications baron Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001-2002, A M Marshall, ‘The Tragedy of King Bhumibol’, 08-Mar-2012,www.zenjournalist.com

[4] T Lennon, ‘His brother’s mysterious death launched Thai King Bhumibol’s 70-year reign’, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 09-Jun-2016, www.dailytelegraph.com.au

[5] ‘Prince’s Theory of How King Ananda Died’, The Argus (Melbourne), 16-Aug-1946, (Trove NLA), www.trove.nla.gov.au
[6] B Wain, ‘Who Killed King Ananda?’, The Wall Street Journal, 07-Jan-2000, www.wsj.com

[7] more notoriously The King Never Smiles, by P M Handley, which the Thai authorities banned and even tried to suppress its publication in the US by appealing in vain to President George W Bush! – according to Indonesian English-language paper ThaiDay, cited by ‘The King Never Smiles’, (Wikipedia), http://en.m.wikipedia.org

[8] ‘Running Afoul of the Thai Monarchy’, The New York Times, 20-Sep-2015, www.nytimes.com. Interestingly, this failsafe mechanism was not invoked by King Bhomibol himself

[9] A secret costing the lives of three innocent men … and no doubt for the glum, Buddhist monarch, a lifetime of moral agonising, A M Marshall, ‘The Great Oz: King of Thailand’, Thai Story, 19-Jul-2011, www.thaistoryblog.wordpress.com