Thai King recovery calms immediate succession fears

By CS Thana

BANGKOK

Thailand's 87-year-old king has recovered from an illness that has kept him in hospital since May, local media reported Tuesday, calming any immediate fears of an impending difficult succession.

The Bangkok Post cited a Royal Household Bureau statement as saying the ailing monarch's pulse, temperature and blood pressure had returned to normal.

Additional blood tests also showed that King Bhumibol Adulyadej was no longer suffering from an infection and X-rays showed a lung infection had cleared.

The announcement will come as a relief to much of the nation, for whom Adulyadej represents a unifying figure among the country's tenuous, military-controlled politics.

Each health alert is a cause of anxiety for the Thai people, the vast majority of whom were born under his reign.

In the tense political climate, many Thais worry about the likely succession, as 63-year-old Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn -- who divorced his third wife last year -- is much less popular than his father.

In 2009, Adulyadej was hospitalized for flu and pneumonia at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital.

Since then, he has been in and out of care, his days outside the ward spent at his seaside “Far From Worries” palace in Hua Hin, 200km (124 miles) south of Bangkok.

In 2011, his health woes continued -- he was diagnosed with intestinal inflammation, and then suffered bleeding in his skull in 2012.