Meet Thailand's New Royal Family After King Maha Vajiralongkorn Was Officially Crowned

Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn was crowned in an elaborate ceremony on Saturday, capping a busy period in which he displayed a different approach from his father since taking the throne more than two years ago.

A budget of 1 billion baht ($31 million) has been approved for the ceremony and two subsequent days of pageantry and royal appearances. The 66-year-old monarch delayed the formal coronation until after a mourning period following the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in October 2016.

The ceremony comes at a tumultuous time in Thailand during which Vajiralongkorn has played a prominent role. He issued statements before and after an inconclusive March election that followed five years of military rule, a rare step in a country where top royals are officially treated as semi-divine and above the political fray.

Those comments -- one of which rebuked former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose allies won the most seats in the election -- mark a shift from the style used by Bhumibol during his seven decades on the throne. Vajiralongkorn also gained ownership of Crown Property Bureau assets valued at more than $9 billion, including prime pieces of Bangkok real estate, through legal changes he approved.

Some of the world’s strictest lese majeste laws hinder critical discussion of the monarchy in Thailand, where lengthy prison sentences have been given out in recent years for sharing news articles or social media posts with content deemed offensive. Politicians on all sides are reluctant to speak about the king, and must comply with any of his decrees.

"The military-backed government is highly responsive to the demands of the king," said Kevin Hewison, an emeritus professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "He’s a military man so he’s big on rules and regulations. He’s using legal mechanisms much more than his father. He seems to be legalistic in his approach to kingship."

Before the election, the king rejected his sister Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya’s move to stand as a prime minister candidate for a party linked to Thaksin. In a royal command, Vajiralongkorn said that “the monarch and the royal family members are above politics.” The party, Thai Raksa Chart, accepted the king’s decision, but was later disbanded by a court for hostility toward the constitutional monarchy.

On the eve of the election, Vajiralongkorn released a statement that in effect asked citizens to back good people to govern the nation. Pheu Thai, a party linked to Thaksin, won the most seats but fell short of a majority. It’s vying with a pro-military party carved out of the junta, Palang Pracharath, to form a coalition government.

About a week after the poll, the king revoked Thaksin’s royal decorations because the former prime minister fled Thailand in 2008 after being sentenced to prison. Thaksin has said the case was politically motivated since it was brought after the military ousted him in a 2006 coup, in part for insulting the monarchy.

Thaksin or his allies won the most seats in every election since 2001, only to be unseated from government by the army or the courts, most recently in a coup in 2014. He described the March election as "rigged," although the Election Commission has said it’s found no reasons to invalidate the poll.

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