King Taksin (taak-sin) The Great was one of Thailand’s great kings renowned for his bravery and leadership at a time of crisis and has been credited for reuniting Thai people after the fall of Ayutthaya.  The former Chao Mueang  or Governor of Tak or “Duke of Tak”, a stronghold of Ayutthaya Kingdom in the lower northern region of Ayutthaya Kingdom. He rose to power in post-Ayutthaya Period after staging  a do-or-die  escape from the Golden City of Ayutthaya in 1767 when the city’s defense against the attack of a large army from Burma collapsed as the last Ayutthaya’s King Ekatat did not allow his troops to use cannons against the Burmese force surrounding the city on ground that the booming sound would make his concubines in his palace frightened.

Other governors of satellite cities of Ayutthaya Kingdom refused to come to the rescue of their king except the Duke of Tak.  When the Golden City was about to fall under relentless attack of the Burmese army, the Duke of Tak, with just around a dozen of his trusted fighting men mounted their horses and cut through the Burmese lines, heading east. He passed through several  garrisons of Ayutthaya and succeeding in convincing Thai fighting men to join him as a new Thai army. He moved his army eastward until reaching a border stronghold of Ayutthaya known as Chandburi, which was close to Cambodia territory, now known as Chandburi Province.

With cavalrymen and foot soldiers in thousands, the Duke of Tak’s had tried to convince the governor of Chandburi to be on his side and help his campaign to regain Ayutthaya from the Burmese. But the Chandburi  governor was unconvinced. Without any other way, he laid siege of the Chandburi town but could not break the defense of the town. After a week of siege, Duke of Tak decided to make his last attack and ordered all of his troops to break all their rice pots so that they will have nothing to eat if they fail to enter the town and force the Chandburi governor to surrender.

The final push of Taksin’s army succeeded as planned. So Chandaburi became a part of Taksin’s new-found power bases.  Reuniting Thai people under his leaderships was a success. The strength of his manpower grew significantly after only one year of peace.  Taksin moved his army down to the Chao Phya River Basin and founded his new kingdom at the west side of Chao Phya River opposite a community known as Bangkok. Taksin named his new territory Thonburi and called himself King of Thonburi. But Thai people remember him as King Taksin the Great. His reign lasted for 14 years from 1768 to 1782. It's the shortest period as a kingdom with only one king in the history of the Thai nation. His death at 58 was very tragic for a great Thai leader who bravely fought many wars with Burma and successfully rebuilt the Thai nation from the ashes of Ayutthya. 

During King of Thonburi’s reign Thailand regained its territory back from Burma and succeeded in a war with Cambodia and Laotian states in 1769 to regain their loyalty to Thai king as in the Ayutthaya Period.  The Thai nation became a great power again on the central heartland of this Golden Land known as Suvarnabhumi. Thailand during King Taksin's reign stretched its power up north to regain the loyalty of the Lanna  Kingdom (Chiengmai and other sister cities then) and also won the loyalty of several southern Muslim states in the Malay Peninsula  as far as Pattani and Trengganu including the small Penang Island. Trengganu and Penang are now part of the present day Malaysia.

 Chao Phya Chakri and his younger brother, Bunma, who were based at Rajburi, a southwestern border town, close to Burma, after the fall of Ayutthaya, decided to join force with Taksin at Chonburi and Chao Phya Chakri became King of Thonburi’s Commander-in-chief  with the name of Chao Phya Mahakasatsuek and his brother became deputy commander by the name of Chao Phya Surasi.

The two top warriors of the Thonburi Kingdom, with a large army spent almost 10 years subjugating former Ayutthya’s vassal states of two Laotian kingdoms at Luang Prabang and Vientiane as well as Cambodia from 1771 to 1781. After receiving news of rebellion against King Taksin, Chao Phya Mahakasatsuek and Chao Phya Surasi headed back to Thonburi with their troops. Chao Phya  Mahakasatsuek was offered by King Taksin’s court officials to take over as the new King of Thonburi as King Taksin went into insanity as claimed by his courtiers and the rebellion leaders. He accepted and moved the city to Bangkok opposite the Thonburi Palace of King Taksin and started a new dynasty known as the House of Chakri. Bangkok became the capital city of Ratanakosin Era of Thailand known to outsiders as The Kingdom of Siam. The former Chao Phya Mahakasatsuek made himself the First King of Siam known as Somdej Phra Buddhayodfa Chulaloke or Rama I. His brother Boonma or Chao Phya Surasi assumed the title of Somdej Phra Bovorn Raj Chao Maha Surasihanart Krom Phra Rajwang Borworn Sathanmongkol or the Front Palace Vice-Roy.

History has it that King Taksin was executed for his insanity.  No one knew exactly how King Taksin was executed.

The story of King Taksin is told to let the readers understand how the red shirts link their plan to stage a massive demonstration on the coming July 27 under a code name Taksin 2. Some of Thaksin core leaders have tried to say that Thaksin might have been a reincarnation of King Taksin because the two names and similar pronunciations. Thaksin is Sansakrit word for “south” while Taksin came form the King’s former position as the governor of Tak, now a province in the lower northern region of Thailand.

Now you understand the code name of the red shirts to topple Abhisit from his premiership and their intention to create massive chaos in Bangkok and other places. Their plan is, according to publicly announced, to start a chaotic condition so that Abhisit can continue to sit as the PM but cannot run this country in an effective way. The plan calls for disturbances in the parliament and on the streets to disrupt government operations in whatever way they would like to do.

It can be called a rebellion plan because it included organizing big demonstration in 4 provinces in the Northeast namely Nakornratsima, Kalasin, Udornthani and Nakorn Phanom to support the core demonstration in Bangkok. The plan is also to instigate border conflicts with neighbouring Burma, Cambodia and the increase in insurgency in the three southern-most provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathivas.

There will be hunting teams to capture PM Abhisit, President of Privy Council, Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda, Deputy PM Suthep, the Minister Attached to the PM Office, Satit Wongnongtoey,  Mr. Theptai Senphong, a personal spokesman of PM Abhisit, and all PAD leaders as well as Mr. Suriyasai Takasila, now secretary-general of New Politics Party, and PAD’s active supporters, Lt. Wing Cmdr. Prasong Soonsiri, former secretary-general of National Security Council, Dr. Pramote Nakorntup, ex-professor at Thammasat University and one of PAD popular guest speakers, Dr. Jermsak Pinthong, an active TV political commentator at ASTV and the state-owned Channel 11 (NBT) and Piya Malakul Na Ayutthaya, a well-known publisher of Dichun Magazine. The plan does not say in detail what hunting of those people exactly means. But the grapevine has it that assassination or kidnapping can be equally a possibility.

There will be an organising of armed small units within urban guerilla groups with an ability to rapidly move about from place to place to play hide-and-seek with the government. So the plan looks like to be a coordinated rebellion movements to destabilize Thailand to the point that Thaksin can come back to Thailand without any legal obligations to deal with and getting back his rights to be in politics again.

As a side strategy to get HM the King involved in the political game, there is a plan to collect names and signatures of one million people over the country to petition the King for Thaksin’s amnesty. This is a gimmick of Thaksin for blaming HM King as his antagonist if the King, on a legal basis, cannot do as the red shirts’ demand in their petition. This is an open secret all well-informed people in Thailand would believe.

Actually, amnesty is a legal tool for a head of state to exercise his power to solve a legal problem involving a large number of people being forced to breach certain legal rulings under abnormal circumstances such as military desertion of duties in time of war. Amnesty is viewed as an act to forget “criminal offenses” committed during a time of war to soldiers and officers of surrendered forces or prisoners of war such as the amnesty granted by the US President Andrew Johnson in 1865 to the Union military deserters as well as soldiers and generals of the Confederate Army after their surrender to the Union Army at the end of the American Civil War. US military deserters and draft dodgers during the Vietnam War were granted amnesty by President Carter in 1977

As a legal tradition, amnesty is granted before a legal proceeding against a criminal offender would start, such as an amnesty granted to Ex-US President Richard Nixon by President Gerald Ford.  An amnesty granted to a criminal offender under corruption charges, in particular a corrupt politician, is unheard of.

In my entry posted to this blog in May 1, 2009, I wrote this:

The post-Vietnam War debate over the pros and cons in the granting of amnesty to both draft dodgers and deserters became a political hot potato and also caused a serious social rift in the US. But the full, complete and unconditional amnesty for the Vietnam War draft dodgers and military deserters was finally granted by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. The purpose was to defuse the rising social tension and bring to a close the legal antagonism in American society. Besides, it would be a very big task and time-consuming legal process to prosecute nearly 100,000 draft evaders and military deserters.

In our own internal conflict during the threat of communist insurgency in the Northeast and lower northern region, Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda, Thailand’s ex-premier, in 1980 made his announcement of his government’s policy hailed as a bold move in using reconciliatory policy to end the most bitter conflict Thailand had ever experience during the post-Vietnam War period. The policy known as PM Office Order No. 66/23 Re: The Policy for Winning the Fight against Communism aimed to use reconciliatory political actions as priority over military operations at bringing peace back to Thailand. The political actions included calling for all active members of the Communist Party of Thailand to lay down their arms and join the government as the Participants in the Development Process of the Thai Nation.

Gen. Prem’s political strategy was a success beyond expectation, making several years of internal conflict coming to an end in a peaceful style. The students were allowed to return to their studies and many of them went on to finish their studies and took further education abroad. We can regard the 66/23 policy as Thailand’s broadest amnesty to those involved in internal conflict. It was supposed to facilitate reconciliation in which the crime of sedition was rather forgotten than forgiven. Such crime against the state deserves capital punishment under the law of the land and it would continue to be so. Condoning or forgiveness over such a crime is impossible in any legal framework in any country. 

Do you think a million names could change a basic legal principle just to help a highly corrupt politician to be free from his guilt of betrayal to the Thai people and the wheel of bad karma?