Word: sarit
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...cheering much more than a one time drum majorette who packs 116 Ibs. into a 35-22-35 frame, punctuated by a pair of eyes that outglimmer the Emerald Buddha. For Pook's crowning marked a watershed in the painful process of forgetting Thailand's late Dictator Sarit Thanarat...
...Sarit valued lovely women more than the rarest jade or the whitest elephant. For all that, no beauty contests were permitted during his rule, and as a result, his country had not named a Miss Thailand in ten years. The reason was simple: before he took power, Field Marshal Sarit had pursued beauty-contest winners with the same zeal he later applied to Communists. Embarrassed by Sarit's extraterritorial demands, the government simply banned the contests, and when Sarit seized government control through a military coup in 1957, he decided it would look better if the ban stayed...
...with everyone gradually calming down about the revelations of Sarit's equally acquisitive financial dealings (TIME, July 17), his successor, avuncular General Thanom Kittikachorn, felt free to revive the competitions. The choice of the new Miss Thailand was almost painfully pure, with a member of the royal family sitting on the jury and each contestant's moral background under scrutiny-several girls of dubious vocation were hurriedly disqualified...
...drawback to the government's efforts at capital formation. Not long ago, Bangkok carried out a little-publicized roundup of leftist-oriented monks to prevent any Communist infiltration of the clergy. But by and large, in peaceful, prosperous Thailand, the golden mean rules. Bangkok is still rocking from the Sarit scandal?the tough, able late Prime Minister is charged with misappropriating vast government funds?and King Bhumibol has been urged to strip Sarit posthumously of his title of field marshal...
...whether Sarit had actually dipped into the till, the committee said that to date it had traced $17.8 million of government money to Sarit's estate. Committee Chairman Phra Manuvej Vimolmath said that part of a state fund of 12 million tickels ($600,000) had gone exclusively to Sarit's minor wives. The money, he said, came from a special government account known as the Funds for Secret Work...