LAOS: The Other Party

When Laos’ two Communist-run northern provinces were integrated into the little kingdom last December, Laotians and many foreign observers remained relaxed. The Pathet Lao’s leader, Prince Souphanouvong, was no Communist but a royal prince and a devout Buddhist, they argued; his followers were few and badly organized, and their program in any case was moderate: peace, unity, neutrality and cooperation with all nations, including Communist China and the neighboring Viet Minh. Only a few pessimists feared that by the general election of 1960 the Pathet Lao—which renamed itself the Neo Lao Hak Xat or Patriotic Front—might successfully subvert the charming little country, into which the U.S. was annually pouring some $43 million in aid. The first surprise came when Soupha-nouvong captured 21 of the National Assembly’s 59 seats last month (TIME. May 19). Last week the affable prince, 46, already Minister of Planning, Reconstruction and Urbanization, was elected president of the National Assembly.

He won because the splintered and squabbling non-Communist majority still refused to get excited. “Souphanouvong has been scolding the government these many years; now he ‘has the power, and we will attack him, and it will serve him right,” said one opponent. Others convinced themselves that with Souphanouvong’s Communists administering American aid, more U.S. money would get past the corrupt politicians and into the hands of the people, who would then be properly grateful and friendly to the West.

Only a few sober observers faced the grim reality: a handful of disciplined and dedicated Communists were brazenly but legally taking over a free country whose economy is dependent on U.S. aid, whose troops are being trained by a French military mission, whose 2,000,000 citizens have hardly heard of Marx and Lenin, and do not know what a Communist is. They only know that they are poor, and when they get the vote, many of them cast it for “the other party,” which in Laos, as in so many of the world’s underdeveloped countries, means the Communists.