They Call Him ‘Jokerman S’

With his term drawing to a close, Surayud “Jokerman S” Chulanont reflects on the little known joys of serving as a military-appointed prime minister

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BANGKOK It was early March, and Surayud Chulanont was starting to come into his own as Thailand’s 35th military-appointed prime minister.

The iTV saga was reaching its climax. Surayud had first promised staffers of the broadcaster that it would not go off the air, and then reversed the decision. iTV staff had gathered together the previous night for a farewell show, crying and vowing to fight on.

“Did you see that show? Amazing television,” Surayud told a Not The Nation (NTN) reporter as he sipped some tea inside a limousine with a giddy look on his face.

“Not a dry eye in the house. They had no idea what was coming next, hee hee.”

Surayud Chulanont enjoys a laugh with other highly respected world leaders.

Surayud then called a press conference. The plan from this brilliant military strategist? Reverse the decision and look like a hero!

“I call it the good-guy-bad-guy-good-guy routine,” he says with a grin three kilometers wide. “Like I said, it’s hi-lar-i-ous. Sometimes I just like to f**k with people. Let’s just call it one of the fringe benefits of being a military-installed premier.”

Over the years, this general has mastered the art of doing something that might seem vicious and managing to make himself look like a good guy in the end. Most generals who lead bloody crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrators, as Surayud did in 1992, don’t manage to come away with a squeaky clean public image. But Surayud is no run-of-the-mill general.

“Jokerman S”—as his friends lovingly call him—was known for his endless string of cracks and pranks while serving in the military.

“Oh yeah, you always had to watch your back when Jokerman S was around,” said one of his closest aides, speaking on condition of anonymity because he planned to egg Surayud’s house later in the evening.

“I remember once we were in the jungle near the Burmese border just cooking up some congee over the fire at 5am in the morning,” the friend said. “I was a little groggy, so I went to get my soup and then I went to sit back down—nothing out of the ordinary. But unbeknownst to me, Jokerman S had pulled out my chair from underneath me. I fell on the ground and the congee was just all over my face, my clothes, my hair! The guys were literally laughing for 15 minutes straight—I kid you not.

Their stomach muscles were sore they were laughing so hard. Let’s just say I never heard the end of it.”

Besides the iTV shake-up, Surayud pulled some other pranks during his premiership. He recalled late December 2006, when his finance minister suggested implementing some capital controls.

“I’ll be honest here, I couldn’t tell a ‘capital control’ from a ‘remote control’,” he says with a chuckle. “C’mon, I’m a military guy! We do land scandals!”

“Anyway, I told my finance minister, ‘Look, if we’re going to do this, let’s have some fun with it. He said that if we do it quickly with no advanced warning, we could possibly send the stock market into the largest one-day tailspin in history! I immediately said ‘Go for it.’”

Surayud, seen here sweating, as he remembers that time he did some 'bad guy' shit, but failed to follow it up with the 'good guy' shit

Most elected politicians in that position would probably consider the fallout on the population from such brash moves. But Jokerman S was no elected politician.

“Yeah, yeah, everyone was saying we’d get some bad press,” he says. “But I didn’t give a s**t. I told them ‘People, we’re a military government! It’s not like we’ll go down in the history books as the next best thing since Abraham Lincoln. Life is short and you only live once… let’s start having some fun!’”

Surayud hasn’t shed his image as a jovial jester throughout his time in office. Even last week, when he faced criticism that the National Legislative Assembly was still passing bills even with the election days away, Jokerman S told the press: “An elected assembly sometimes could be dictated to by the policies of political parties. But the present NLA cannot be.”

“Oh yes, I thought of that line while I was in the shower,” Surayud tells NTN with that patented funnyman look on his face. “You can just say the craziest shit and people take it really seriously. I will miss the irony of my position.”

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