Pridi Banomyong

Pridi Banomyong wrote the constitution that ended the absolute monarchy in Siam and died in exile in Paris fifty-one years later, accused of a regicide he almost certainly had nothing to do with. He was a law student in France who founded the People's Party there with Plaek Phibunsongkhram, and the two led the bloodless revolution of June 1932 that made the king a constitutional monarch. Pridi was the civilian wing: he drafted the constitution, founded Thammasat University to teach law and politics to people outside the aristocracy, and produced an economic plan of state-led development that was denounced as communist and forced him briefly abroad. During the Second World War, with Phibun's government allied to Japan, Pridi ran the Free Thai underground as regent, which is why Thailand was treated leniently in 1945. He became prime minister in 1946. In June that year King Ananda Mahidol was found shot dead in his bed, and the case has never been solved; Pridi's enemies spread the accusation, he resigned within months, and a coup in 1947 removed the civilian government for good. He spent twenty-one years in China and the rest in France. Thailand rehabilitated him slowly, and UNESCO marked his centenary in 2000. Thammasat became the centre of Thai student politics and the site of the 1976 massacre, which is a lineage he would have recognised. His economic plan of 1933 proposed cooperative agriculture and state ownership and was denounced by the king himself in a written rebuttal. The accusation over the king's death was never tested in court against him; three palace servants were executed for it in 1955 in a trial widely regarded as a fabrication.

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