THAILAND: The Democracy Way

THAILAND The Democracy Way

For nearly a quarter of a century the closest friend, steadiest supporter and likeliest successor of Thailand’s shrewd and urbane Premier Pibulsonggram has been his chief of police, General Pao Sriyanonda. A heavy-lidded ladies’ man who puts almost as much trust in his private astrologer as he does in his efficient and well-armed cops, Pao long ago established himself as the coming man in Thai affairs by the amazing skill with which he amassed money and the bacterial thoroughness with which he and his in-laws invaded the more vital organs of government.

Border Traffic. Police Chief Pao is a man with interests in 20 businesses. In Thailand there is no business like the dope business. The U.N. Narcotics Commission brands Thailand as one of the world’s biggest opium trade centers. On several occasions, Pao’s police made a great show of seizing contraband opium coming across the northern border from China and paid off large government rewards to the informers. But somehow, Pao’s cops never arrested any smugglers, and somehow the seized opium had a way of turning up in Bangkok’s legal opium dens or in the illegal export market.

Early this year, just when people were openly asking when Pao would be taking over the premiership, he ran into the worst sort of trouble that can befall a Thai statesman: star trouble. Thailand’s best astrologers predicted in the newspapers that about the month of August, ruin would come upon one or two of Bangkok’s mighty. Rumor said that Pao fired three astrologers in a row for providinig hin with unfavorable predictions. At the height of this horoscopic crisis. Preimier Pibulsonggram returned from a trip to the U.S., full of a lot of new ideas for trying out democratic ways in Thailand. The most upsetting of these innovations was holding weekly Washington-style press conferences at which squirming ministers sometimes had to answer reporters’ questions for hours on end.

Diplomatic Trip. Pibulsonggram also abolished press censorship. This enabled Bangkok newspapers to report that Pao’s police had just made an unprecedented haul of 20 tons of contraband opium, and that government rewards paid out for the tip amounted to $1,000,000. Again, no body was arrested. Questioned at the Premier’s next press conference, Police Chief Pao could not satisfactorily explain what had happened to the confiscated opium or to the $1,000,000 reward.

Pibulsonggram moved swiftly, in the new democratic fashion. With a big smile, he summoned Pao and dispatched him in his capacity as deputy finance minister, to Washington to see about a new U.S. loan. The plane was hardly off the ground before the Premier began separating Pao and his relatives from their extra jobs and it had hardly landed in the U.S. before Pibulsonggram made himself interior minister and promised to stop opium smuggling.

For a few days tension ran high in Bangkok. At one point, all Pao’s men and their families lived under 24-hour armed surveillance by the army, but it soon became evident that Pibulsonggram was only restraining, and not destroying, his friend Pao. Quiet returned to Bangkok. So last week, did Police Chief Pao. From the airport he rushed home for a long chat with his latest astrologer.

At his weekly press conference, Pibulsonggram was asked if there was bad blood between the Premier and the police chief. Certainly not. said the Premier with a gentle smile. “I told him: ‘We are going the democracy way now.’ He answered: ‘If you go democracy, I go along too.’ “

But not the valuable Coca-Cola concession, long held by Pibulsonggram’s own son-in-law, the deputy foreign minister.