Originally Posted by
Dr. HFH
The King has the love and respect of the Thai people as well as the political capital that he does because he has spent decades earning it.
That's the official party line, but it's debatable on both counts: a) how much respect the King actually enjoys and how much is just political maneuvering on the top and going with the flow (in the lower ranks), and b) whether he's actually a force for good or not. The royalty is obscenely wealthy, entirely unaccountable for its actions, and closely tied to the small military-political nexus whose grip on the power has only been challenged by Thaksin and, now, the Red Shirts.