Long live the king: As Thai monarch turns 88, an auspicious number in Chinese culture, uncertainty surrounds succession
Due to the country’s increasingly strict lese-majeste laws, discussions of the king’s health and issues surrounding the royal succession are taboo in Thailand.
As Thailand celebrates the 88th birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej today, his failing health ensures some will be pondering the elephant in the room: the looming period of uncertainty and succession likely to follow his eventual death.
Revered in Thailand as a unifying figure, the world’s longest-serving monarch has withdrawn from public life in recent years and, on medical advice, skipped last year’s birthday celebrations altogether.
Due to the country’s increasingly strict lese-majeste laws, discussions of the king’s health and issues surrounding the royal succession are taboo in Thailand. Nonetheless, the question of who will replace His Majesty casts a long shadow over the country’s political scene, which has been riven by instability.
Thailand has in the past decade been increasingly unsettled by a sequence of political upheavals, with two military coups since 2006. In the first, prime minister Thaksin Sinawatra was overthrown; in the second, his sister Yingluck was ousted.
The coups triggered a wave of protests and the emergence of two factions: the mostly rural supporters of the Shinawatras – known as “red shirts” – and their Bangkok-based detractors more closely aligned to the monarchy – known as “yellow shirts”.
