Do-It-Yourself Premier

"We 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 the temples shine, the country is prosperous."

For 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 of himself as the Thai Charles de Gaulle, but with Oriental variation he had also about him a good deal of Manhattan's late effervescent Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

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--a brutal but effective reminder that the annual custom of burning down shops to collect insurance for the Chinese New Year celebration was thenceforth taboo. Fortnight ago. prowling La Guardia-style about the streets of Bangkok in his chauffeur-driven car, Sarit drew up behind an automobile in which a woman sat eating fruit and throwing the peels out the window. The Premier characteristically took her license-plate number, ordered the police to pick her up and fine her 100 bahts ($5) for littering.

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 the job.

Open Door. When Sarit seized power, Thailand had a stable currency and healthy dollar reserves, but had just suffered a 30% drop in its rice exports--an ominous warning that unless it diversified, its economy might be in trouble. To attract foreign capital, Sarit offered terms that U.S. economists found "unparalleled." There is now no duty on machinery or spare parts, no corporation taxes for five years, no obstacles put in the way of foreign experts coming in or foreign profits going out. At the same time, U.S. aid--$160 million in the past eight years--does its work unhindered by the customary Asian complex that to take advice is to lose face; unlike its neighbors, Thailand (formerly Siam) has been an independent nation for 600 years, and is not touchily sensitive that foreign aid might bring back colonialism. U.S. aid has improved rice seed and livestock, built roads and reservoirs, put up 31 hospitals, 500 bridges, 750 health centers.

With a stern eye cocked on familiar habits among his own countrymen, Sarit has decreed new penalties for corruption, ranging from five years in prison to death. Vigilant against Communists, Sarit last month personally questioned a captured Communist guerrilla, then ordered him machine-gunned. Just about any Thai politician or journalist who ever set foot in Red China has been arrested.

Some of Sarit's admirers fear that, having once nearly played himself to death, he may now work himself to death. The idea seems to occur to the strongman too. Recently fishermen asked the Agriculture Department whether the ban on Communist imports meant that grown fish in their nurseries, originally imported from Red China, were now illegal. The bureaucrats, afraid to rule, sought out Sarit, resting on a beach outside Bangkok. He told them to leave the fish alone, then rolled crankily over in the sun. "Isn't there anyone else." he grumbled, "who can make a decision around here?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.