Gwynne Dyer: As ailing monarch fades, a political crisis simmers

King Bhumibol's subjects pray for his recovery. Photo / AP

People get long jail sentences in Thailand for criticising the royal family, so the Thai media have been silent on the question of what happens after the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

But the king is 81 and he has been in hospital for a month now, so there are widespread fears that he is dying. Last week the Bangkok stockmarket fell by 8 per cent in a day on rumours that his health is worse than the Palace admits.

Bhumibol has been on the throne for 63 years and he is universally revered. Thailand is three years into the worst political crisis it has seen since it became a more or less democratic country two decades ago, and the king is just about the only unifying and stabilising factor that remains. His death would make matters much worse.

The crisis is the result of democracy. Thailand has become a semi-developed country - average income has risen 40-fold since Bhumibol came to the throne - but most of the population is still rural and quite poor. Their votes used to be bought by powerful local politicians and delivered to whichever urban-based party paid the highest price, but no more.

As the people of the overwhelmingly rural north and northeast acquired more education and sophistication, they started using their votes to back politicians who promised to defend their interests and not just those of the Bangkok-based economic elite. In 2001, they elected a populist politician of humble origins called Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister.

Thaksin had made a fortune in telecommunications, and he probably couldn't have won the elections if he wasn't rich. But he did govern in the interests of the poor, and he was re-elected with an increased majority in 2005.

It was how you would expect a maturing democracy to work, for the poor always outnumber the rich. But you would also expect a backlash from the traditional ruling elite, and it came in the form of the People's Alliance of Democracy (PAD), a yellow-shirted movement that actually aimed to roll back democracy.

By provoking confrontations in the streets with Thaksin's supporters (who took to wearing red shirts), the PAD created a pretext for its allies in the Army to seize power in a military coup in 2006. Since then, Thailand has been in permanent crisis.

Thaksin was convicted of corruption in questionable circumstances and now lives in exile. His political party, Thai Rak Thai, was forced to disband after being found guilty of "electoral fraud" by the Constitutional Court, whose impartiality in this case is open to question.

However, Thaksin's supporters remain devoted to him, and when the Army allowed Thais to vote again at the end of 2007, a new party that was essentially a continuation of Thai Rak Thai won the election.