Bangkok's Firing Squad, Lime Trees & "Underboobs"

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The angry, frustrated, talkative general who seized Thailand in a military coup last May, said on Monday (March 23) if he had "complete power" he would have "a firing squad" execute people, but now he suffers insomnia because Thais are demanding democracy.

In 2003, Thailand stopped roping convicts to a cross with arms outstretched, to be shot in the back by a lone executioner, and instead began lethal injections.

"I can't even stop people from opposing me at this moment," Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha said in a speech at a Federation of Thai Industries convention here in Bangkok.

"If I genuinely had complete power, I would have imprisoned [critics] or handed them to a firing squad. It would be over, I wouldn't have to wake up at night like this.

"Today there are some people who love me, but there are also many people who hate me," he said from a podium in front of a gigantic screen which vividly projected Gen. Prayuth speaking, larger-than-life.

The general, who also played a role in a bloodless 2006 coup, has expressed increasingly unusual statements in recent weeks, causing confusion, concern and criticism.

Muzzled by Gen. Prayuth's martial law and use of military courts to put civilian dissidents on trial, people are responding through Internet's social media to the coup leader's surprising quotes.

One online Photoshopped portrait shows Gen. Prayuth wearing rouge and dressed as a frilly Marie Antoinette, complete with an 18th century powdered bouffant wig, while saying: "Let them eat limes."

That meme appeared after Gen. Prayuth talked about the current problem of higher prices for limes, which are a key ingredient in Thai cuisine.

"From now on, I would like every household to grow lime trees for their own consumption, so they won't have to complain about the increasing price," Gen. Prayuth said on March 17.

"You have to learn to take care of yourself."

In his keynote speech in Bangkok opening the "Asia in a Borderless World" Global Forum for Pennsylvania University's Wharton School on March 13, Gen. Prayuth said a peeved Washington might block him from visiting America.

Four days after local media reported Gen. Prayuth's complaint, he said, "I was only joking, because many attendees at the conference were American.

"I teased them on whether or not they would bar me from going to the U.S., while I do not bar them from doing business with me, and they laughed," he said.

"Was this really the place to make a crack about possibly not being able to get a visa to the United States?" wrote disappointed business columnist Umesh Pandey in Monday's (March 23) Bangkok Post.

"The joke was on you, Dear Leader," the respected columnist said, using an honorific popular among satirists in Thailand who liken Gen. Prayuth to North Korea's eccentric dictator.

"I was earlier asked by a reporter, 'What are the results of the government's work?' I almost punched the person who questioned me, in the face," Gen. Prayuth said earlier in March.

"The government has done a lot so far. Don't they see it?"

Others in his ruling junta are meanwhile expressing weird decrees, including his Culture Ministry which recently warned Thai females would be imprisoned for five years if they were identified in any online photographs exposing their "underboobs".

Many Thais regard Gen. Prayuth's sensational remarks as his awkward way of trying to project a disciplinarian, tough-talking, military style.

Others are tuning out, especially during his weekly lectures which he broadcasts simultaneously on several Thai TV channels every Friday evening.

Restaurants, bars and other public venues often show him repeatedly rising and lowering his thick eyebrows while stiffly speaking on their big digital screens above patrons' tables, but the sound is sometimes turned off and replaced by the establishments' music.

Asked why the owners do not switch off the broadcast, one pork-and-chicken cafe manager replied:

"I keep it on because after he is finished, we want to watch the next program, and we don't know how long he is going to speak."

Elsewhere, in eastern Thailand's Isaan region, a middle-aged Thai mother recently showed off her daughter's ability to spontaneously recite Gen. Prayuth's "12 Values" which the general told all schools to order children to memorize.

When questioned, the mother and other parents in her group said they did not think it was any problem for young minds to learn mandatory lessons emphasizing Gen. Prayuth's 12 simplistic ways to be obedient and compliant.

The eight-year-old girl's performance instead proved her fine ability to recall information, her proud mother said.

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final chapter, "Ceremonies and Regalia," in a new book titled King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.

His websites are

http://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/animists/sets

https://gumroad.com/l/RHwa

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