Word: sarit
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...made excuses for Peking. But with the savage repression of the Tibetan revolt, and deliberate provocation of India, Southeast Asians were taking seriously the threat of "yellow imperialism." Burma, which had formerly refused U.S. aid, now recoiled at the thought of loans from Peking. Thailand's Marshal Sarit had placed an embargo on imports from Red China and Malaya closed down two Red Chinese banks as centers of smuggling and espionage. And though India's Nehru, true to his nature, continued to vacillate, hostility toward Red China was rampant among the Indian masses...
...must take one step backward in order to take 100 steps forward," declared tough, chunky Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, 51, and with that convenient philosophy in mind last October, he took over Thailand's government, abrogated the constitution, dissolved the Parliament, abolished political parties, and set up martial law. Since most of the democratic trappings of the country were more apparent than real, Thailand did not seem to mind such highhandedness at all. Weeks ago, as the Buddhist Lenten season of Purima Pansa began. Thai temples gleamed with new coats of gold in keeping with the old adage. "When...
...more than a year before his quiet coup, Sarit was Thailand's absentee strongman, with an obedient Premier in office and a contented young King Phumiphon staying regally above politics. But Sarit was spending so much time in Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. because of his liver-the result of a lifetime of high living-that some of the country's tolerated bad habits had become intolerable. To break up the entrenched corruption and to ward off the increasing appeal of Communism, Sarit decided to take on the premiership in person. He liked to think...
Nuts & Taboos. Sustaining himself on a diet of nuts and oranges (he had quit drinking) and working until all hours of the night, Sarit became not only Premier but the nation's chief fireman, policeman and garbage collector. He commanded housewives to hang their laundry out of sight, abolished pushcarts, opened sheltered markets, dispatched dredges to the silted canals, bought 60 new garbage trucks for Bangkok, ordered pedicabs off the street. When a rash of fires broke out in the business district last winter. Sarit raced to the scene one night, ordered four Chinese merchants shot on the spot...
...Sarit himself has traveled far from the days when he headed the national lottery, with all the temptations that that involved. "If I make mistakes," he says, "it's because of ignorance rather than ill will." Today the nation's top politicians, including six ex-Premiers, are serving as his advisers, drafted into...