Getting to know Pimpen Vejjajiva, the different type of First Lady
By Susan C.
Pimpen and Abhisit are seen side by side
Although Thailand has never had the title of “First Lady” traditionally, the rise of Abhisit Vejjajiva to the premiership has made people unavoidably turn their eyes to his wife Pimpen, a little-known Thai woman who is working as a mathematics lecturer at Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Abhisit, nicknamed “Mark”, may be quite an outgoing politician whom has become widely known since he joined Democrat Party and won his party the only parliamentary seat in Bangkok in 1992 to mark his political debut. Dr. Pimpen, or “Taeng”, who has played a supporter’s role – both at their home by taking good care of their children and in some election campaigns – is still low profile.
In Thailand, the wives of key politicians, government officials or other types of influential figures are usually called “lang baan” in Thai, which literally means “(someone in) the back of the house”. This term may derive from a Thai tradition which prefers seeing a woman staying in the back to leading in the front. A Thai expression states that “men are the front legs of elephants while women are those back legs.”
However, some people believe that a large number of “lang baan” are very powerful, and in several cases they are even more powerful than their husbands.
In the case of Abhisit and Pimpen, the story may be different as both of them were from the same class at Chulalongkorn University Demonstration School, but they were in different classrooms. They did get to know each other until they were in Grade 6 when the school arranged students in groups for mathematics class.
After completing Grade 6, Abhisit went to England, where he was born in Newcastle, to continue his study and later be transferred to Eton College till he graduated. Abhisit returned to Thailand for a short period of time and fortunately met Pimpen at a birthday party of one of their friends from the primary school. Abhisit wanted to be a good friend of Pimpen, he later returned to England to study at Oxford University and started writing letters to Pimpen who wrote back.
Young Pimpen and Abhisit
In 1986, Abhisit received a Bachelor’s degree with first class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford. He returned to Thailand and taught briefly at Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy while Pimpen was still study in a six-year programme at the Faculty of Dentistry, Chulalongkorn University, with two more years to graduate.
Two years later, they got married before going together to England where Abhisit wanted to pursue a Master’s degree in Economics. After receiving his master’s, Abhisit along with Pimpen returned to Thailand where he became a lecturer in the Faculty of Economics at Thammasat University.
In 1992, Abhisit decided to join Democrat Party and run in the general election in March from which he won the only Bangkok seat for his party. However, there was the Black May protest against Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon during which a large number of people died, injured and disappeared. After Thailand returned to peace, there was another election and Abhisit was elected while Democrat Party won majority of the seats in the House of Representatives and formed the government. Abhisit was appointed the government spokesman.
During the past 17 years of his political career, Abhisit was considerably successful as he became the deputy secretary to the Prime Minister in 1994, the chairman of the House Committee on Education Affairs in 1995, the chairman of House Committee to Consider the National Education Bill in 1998 and the minister attached to the Prime Minister’s Office in 2001 while in the party he rose to become one of Democrat deputy leaders in 1999 and finally the leader of the Democrat Party in 2005.
On Pimpen’s side, she during those days became the mother of two children, Prang – the daughter who was born on November 28, 1990 — and Pannasit – the son who was born on August 3, 1993. In addition to her routine works in taking care of the kids, Pimpen had changed her mind of becoming a dentist to taking mathematics seriously and finally received a Master’s degree and a Doctorate in Mathematics from the Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, and eventually turned herself to be a lecturer at the faculty’s Department of Mathematics of the university until now.
Abhisit, now the 27th prime minister of Thailand, once told the media when asked what he was impressed with Pimpen the most, “Taeng is a straight-forward person and very sincere, she would exactly speak her mind out.”
And when asked if Pimpen had played a supportive role in his political activities, he said, “We have the principle in our family that each of us is having our own works to do. She is a university lecturer so she would have her responsibilities. We feel that each of us has already performed our duties quite well, but we would usually exchange our views for mutual understanding and ask about this and that of the other party. It’s not that she has to sacrifice her works to support mine.”
And when asked that Pimpen has been quite low-profile and hardly given interviews, Abhisit explained that it was some kinds of agreement, saying “She would like to reserve her own privacy. When we go out, she already feel that public eyes are catching on her. Both of us are quite shy so we had to adjust.”
When asked what type of husband and wife they are, Abhisit said, “We were born only two days apart so we are just like friends… we have so many things in common, both of us take things seriously and quite firm in our ideologies. She tends to be a strong believer in rightness. We usually discuss about this and that but I would not take any problem from works into the family.”
For Pimpen, when asked what she was impressed by Abhisit the most, she said “He is a very sincere person, open, good-hearted and always the same person right from the beginning.”
She said, “Any outsider would see him as a very quiet person which is not real, he is usually quite talkative and quite playful, but he truly loves his family – paying a lot of attention to us (her and their children) – a very warm person, and tried to give us so much time he possibly could.”
Abhisit would usually not tell his wife about the problems arising from his works. Pimpen said, “Maybe because he is happy with his works. He has hardly lost his heart in works, he would be quite calm and always want to fight. The best thing that I could do is to give him my moral support.”
Pimpen said she doesn’t have any special measures to take care of the prime minister in addition to her moral support.
After learning about Pimpen, I believe most people would have a positive picture of her, especially on her new status of Thailand’s First Lady which she may not like to be called so.
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