Thai King Sacks Six Palace Officials, Royal Consort
King Maha Vajiralongkorn surprised Thailand’s public when he took away royal consort Sineenat Wongvajirapakd’s title and ranks. (Wikimedia Commons)
The King of Thailand, Maha Vajiralongkorn, fired six palace officials for alleged “evil” actions on October 23. This comes less than two days after the king stripped his royal consort of her title.
The most senior of the sacked officials is Police Lieutenant General Sakolket Chantra of the Royal Household Bureau, who often acted as a palace representative at public events. According to the Royal Thai Government Gazette, the officials “severely breached disciplinary conduct for their evil actions by exploiting their official positions for their own or other people's gain.”
Just days before, the king shocked his nation by stripping Sineenat Wongvajirapakd of her title as “royal consort.” The former pilot and major general was the first person to be given the title of royal noble consort in nearly a century. Sineenat received the position in July, allowing her to enter an official polygymous relationship with the king.
However, the royal palace labeled her as being “disloyal…, ungrateful…, [and] ambitious” and accused her of inappropriately taking advantage of royal prerogatives in an attempt to supplant Queen Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya, the king's fourth wife.
The whereabouts of the former royal consort are currently unknown. She was last seen on October 21, the day when she lost her title and military ranks.
According to Tamara Loos, chair of the history department at Cornell University, the king’s actions represent a troubling trend in Thai politics. “He's supporting [an outdated form of marriage] that values inequality and hierarchy… [and] that don’t align with notions of human rights and democracy,” she said.
Loos is worried that through “systematically arrogating power exclusively to himself,” the king is trying to “reassert a kind of absolutism that we haven't seen in Thailand since the 1920s.”
Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932, and the king’s position as the head of state, the head of the armed forces, and an upholder of Buddhism is largely ceremonial. However, unlike in countries such as Great Britain or Japan, the Thai monarch exerts considerable influence over the government. Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia with the Council on Foreign Relations, claims that the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej was known to have “intervened in politics all the time, but he usually did so behind closed doors.”
In a country that has seen heavy military intervention throughout its recent history, including a dozen coup d’etats interrupting civilian governments in the past 80 years, the Thai people revere their king as a mediator, a unifying figure, and a symbol of government authority.
Although the implications of the king’s recent dismissals are not clear at this point, Kurlantzick says that the king is certainly “amassing more power and exercising it more openly than his father did,” which may “undermine the political stability of the country.”