Royal Visitors

By the time this article will appear the King and Queen of Thailand will have left these shores and the local social climbers will be putting their tiaras back into cold storage. It is quite possible however that pictures of the "oh so lovely Queen" and the "boyish saxophone playing King" will still be appearing. Conditioned reflexes! One thing about the visit is certain and that is the success of the PR boys. For at least two weeks before the visit one could not pick up a paper that did not contain stories about the Royal couple. The King was "handsome, democratic, musical, intelligent and concerned for the welfare of his people."

The fact that Thailand is run by an oligarchy which has prohibited the existence of opposition parties and will shortly introduce a constitution already famous for its brevity and lack of provision for democratic institutions, was ignored.

The fact that the ruler of Thailand, Sarit, personally supervises the execution of political opponents was conveniently forgotten.

In all fairness, however, it must be stated that most of the political sins of the Thai rulers are of omission rather than commission, but this fact does not make it any less repugnant to me that we should fete the representatives of that country. Whether or not the King has any real power and whether or not he supports Sarit is irrelevant.