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Comment by mhurron | Hacker News Reader

> This guy is super popular. ... Not out of compulsion.

Making it a crime to criticize the royal family with punishments up to 15 years tends to make it look like uncoerced love.

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Thailand in a sense is a very divided country, the one thing that the majorities on either sides could agree on was their respect for the king. They called him a "stabilising force" for precisely that reason, the huge majority of Thai's genuinely loved and respected the man if for no other reason than he was a public figure who'd been around before most of them were born and whom was mostly above the kind of day to day dirty politics that lead Thailand to be in an endless cycle of elected government followed by coup.

This is all just based on my personal experience talking to people.

I started asking about him because the pictures were everywhere. Maybe I was fooled but it sure seemed like they liked him and had good things to say. Not that they were fearfully trying to avoid speaking ill of the king.

Is there a law requiring them to hang his picture? I don't think I've been in a single thai owned business that didn't have him hanging on the wall.

You grow up in a nation where from childbirth you're taught its taboo to criticize the ruler - that's consistent with everybody having good things to say; everybody hanging the picture. It becomes second nature.

There is no such law requiring them to hang his picture. Many Thai restaurants in US also have his picture hanged.

I feel the same way and made the comment up-thread. I was only visiting for ten days though. Coming from the US it's hard to imagine any current ruler being as well liked as this guy.

The Crown Prince isn't nearly as popular, despite the same lèse-majesté laws applying to discussion of him.

To note: that's not from the royal Thai family, but from the policing structures in Thailand.

And a popular policy for the ruling class at that. I'd imagine it'd be tough for the king to change that law. He spoke out against it previously in 2005 but only to say that "the king can be wrong".. therefore people can say he is wrong in public. It's still being enforced often despite that comment.

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