THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST

Crown Princess Sirindhorn is by far the most popular of the four children of Bhumibol and Sirikit. Most
Thais would far rather see her succeeding her father than Vajiralongkorn. As Boyce noted of Srirasmi's
chilly response:
Her reaction was interesting, given a widespread, longstanding perception that Sirindhorn may
somehow edge out the Crown Prince as successor to the King.
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When most journalists and academics write about Vajiralongkorn, mindful of the strict lèse majesté law
and the crown prince's personal reputation for cruelty and violent rages, most resort to the safe formula of
saying the likely future Rama X has yet to earn the same love and reverence among Thailand's people as
his father. Several U.S. embassy "scenesetter" cables adopt a similar phrasing:
Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn neither commands the respect nor displays the charisma of his
beloved father, who greatly expanded the prestige and influence of the monarchy during his 62year
reign. [10BANGKOK45]
While this is true as far as it goes, the fact is that nobody commands the same respect among Thais
as Bhumibol; certainly nobody alive today, and probably not even any other Thai in history. Even if
Vajiralongkorn was liked and respected, he would still have a hard time coming even close to matching
his father. But the reality is that the crown prince is “already widely loathed and feared”, in the words of a
March 2010 article in the Economist:
Most Thais try not even to think about his accession. “This reign ends. And then, nothing,” says
an academic. The next ruler must fill the shoes of a beatified icon whose achievements have
been swathed in a personality cult. The role of a crown prince in an era of great longevity and
public scrutiny is tough anywhere. In Thailand it verges on the impossible. “How do you follow
someone who walks on water?” asks a senior Western diplomat.
In a 2009 cable discussing the closest friends and advisers of the leading royals, Eric John notes that few
people get close to Vajiralongorn and stay there:
Long known for violent and unpredictable mood swings, the Crown Prince has few people who
have stayed long in his inner circle. [09BANGKOK2967]
If anybody doubts the dangers of saying in public what the vast majority of Thais privately believe, the
fate of Harry Nicolaides stands as a stark warning. Nicolaides was typical of the thousands of foreign men
trying to scrape a living in Thailand after drifting into the country and finding they don’t want to leave.
True to the stereotype, he wrote bad fiction and dreamed of authoring a book that would make his fortune
and free him from the drudgery and relative poverty of life as an English teacher in Thailand, the standard
fall-back career for washed-up Westerners. Nicolaides' novel Verisimilitude: Is the truth, the truth? was
self-published in 2005; he printed 50 copies, of which only seven were ever sold. In one passage, the
novel discusses the sexual shenanigans of a Thai prince, unnamed but clearly based on Vajiralongjorn: