The burning of Bangkok is the worst thing to happen to Thailand since the Burmese captured and razed the ancient capital Ayutthaya in 1767. The Bangkok middle class will not forget nor easily forgive what the die-hard Red Shirts did to their beloved city.
Nor will the Red Shirts and their provincial families and supporters forget - nor long forgive - the army's assault on their encampment in the middle of the Thai capital that killed more than 50 people and wounded hundreds more, some of them women.
How can there be any kind of reconciliation now? New elections will certainly be held someday, unless the army steps in with another coup. But Thailand has had poll after poll without solving the underlying political problem. The Red Shirts have even more reason than the government and its backers to distrust election results.
As a first step, King Bhumibol should be persuaded to abdicate for reasons of ill-health and name his grandson as his royal successor. Note, I said his grandson, not his son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. The Privy Council should then name Crown Princess Maha Siridhorn as regent for the new King Rama X, since he is a child.
Naming his grandson, Prince Tipangkara, as king might assuage some of the disappointment in the crown prince, or, more importantly, of his friends and followers. His unmarried sister, Princess Maha, is widely popular. She is a "uniter" while the crown prince is, to put it delicately, a "divider," and Thailand hardly needs more of those.
It is unknown whether Thailand's troubles are amenable any more to the monarch's special palliative. The king earned his reputation for evenhandedness by adjudicating disputes among the elites but the current divisions may be too deep for any monarch to mediate, no matter how popular. But one can't know without a final try. It might even save the monarchy.
If nothing else, abdication in favor of his grandson would avoid adding a divisive succession on top of Thailand's other woes, and the new princess-regent would have the benefit of King Bhumibol's counsel while he is still living. The 82-year-old king, who ascended the throne in 1946, has been hospitalized since September.
The second thing the government should do is move the capital out of Bangkok - immediately, right now, decamp. Set up shop instead in a temporary administrative center some place further north of Bangkok; maybe Chiang Mai or Nakhon Savan.
In 2005 the generals who rule neighboring Myanmar surprised and puzzled the world by moving their administrative capital out of Yangon to the interior, creating a new capital city called Napyitaw. The junta did not deign to explain the reasons for the move. It was assumed that they felt safer from the threat of popular demonstrations in their new fortress capital than in Yangon. Maybe they were on to something.
Moving Thailand's capital into the heartland of the opposition might be seen as a sign of confidence and, if nothing else, it would outflank any move by the opposition should it try to set up an alternative capital in the north as a prelude to outright civil war.
It is fair to say that millions of ordinary Thai people loathe Bangkok. You could see that in the way they torched buildings in the wake of the army assault. Probably there are many who would dearly love to see the city totally burned to the ground, like ancient Ayutthaya. For many, Bangkok is the Great Satan, the symbol of everything they think is oppressive about their country.
Thailand has had several capitals since a distinct Siamese identity emerged about 1,200 years ago. Bangkok has been the seat of government for only a little more than 200 of those years after the Burmese captured and razed the former capital at Ayutthaya.
There was a time, back in the 1970s, when the government considered moving some of the government ministries around the country, including locating some in Hua Hin. In parts of the small resort city one can still see spaces that were demarked for future government buildings and are only now being replaced by housing developments.
The government might move the capital back to the heartland of old Siam, around the ancient cities of Sukhotai or Phitsanulok. Or, it could take a leaf from some other countries, such as Brazil, that have built a brand new capital away from the coast to the interior to spur development of impoverished regions. That might mean building an entirely new capital in the northeast, a region known as the Isan.
One can imagine that the infrastructure expenditures that would come with the building of an entirely new administrative center somewhere in the heart of the Isan might stimulate the local economy and go a long way to ameliorating the grievances that the local population holds against Bangkok and the people who live there.
Bangkok could remain, as it is today, the commercial capital of the country, a magnet for tourism and possibly also the royal capital for ceremonies and processions.
At the moment, the two forces in Thailand seem to have fought each other to a standstill. Moving the capital, or even threatening to move the capital, might be a game-changer. In any case, the government would have a lot better reason to do it than the generals did in Burma.
