After King Bhumibol Adulyadej's seven-decade reign, Thailand is an emotionally charged landscape, overcome with grief and nostalgia for a remarkable past and anxious about an uncertain future. On the late monarch's watch, the country clocked steady growth on sufficient political stability to rise from a village backwater to a modern nation with a 70-million-strong market and a $400-billion economy. But unless Thais can come to new terms in their society through renegotiation and recalibration, all their achievements will be at risk. As political volatility looms, the economy that grew out of King Bhumibol's reign may -- ironically -- prove to be Thailand's saving grace.
For a country transitioning from a 70-year political order, it is unsurprising that Thailand is in limbo. Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, King Bhumibol's anointed successor, has asked for an unspecified waiting period to grieve with the Thai people and to prepare for the throne. While Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has stated in unmistakable terms that the crown prince will be King Rama X, the absence of an immediate new monarch, officially acknowledged by parliament, leaves Thailand without a traditional head of state.
