A course in Sarit Studies

6 August 2001

Sarit Thanarat is a major figure of twentieth century Thailand. The proposal by the Khon Kaen education office to use Sarit’s life as an example for teaching children is absolutely appropriate. His term as prime minister lasted only five years (1958–63) but was a turning point. He enhanced the role of the monarchy. He placed Thailand firmly under US patronage. He began the era of rapid economic development. But for our democratic age, perhaps the main lessons to be learnt from Sarit’s life lie elsewhere.

After his death, Sarit was found to have assets of 2.8 billion baht. This amounted to 0.67 per cent of GDP, and the modern equivalent would be 33 billion. The courts eventually ruled that he had stolen 394 million from the prime minister’s secret fund, 240 million from the Lottery Bureau, and 100 million from a percentage of lottery sales revenue earmarked for the army.

His estate included over 20,000 rai of land. Much of this lay along the new roads which Sarit’s government built across the northeast with US funding. Sarit and his military cronies assigned land ownership along these highways to themselves. Some of the golf courses recently built in areas which ought to be protected forest are owned by the descendants.

He had interests in 45 companies. Some of these were government-policed monopolies. Every rice-miller had to buy sacks from a company part-owned by Sarit. Most government property was insured by a Sarit company. Government construction contracts were allotted to a syndicate controlled by Sarit and friends. Mining rights and oil exploration concessions were handled in the same way. Tugs for the port, helicopters for the Forestry Department, equipment for the tobacco monopoly, and supplies for the Lottery Bureau were all supplied through Sarit companies. Suharto perfected this kind of thing. But Sarit was there first.

He was involved in opium trading. He was an officer in the army which marched through the Shan States during the second world war. After the army took power by coup in 1947 (with Sarit playing a major role), the proposal to outlaw opium by 1953 was quietly forgotten. The army and the police competed to control the trade. In a famous incident at Lampang railway station in 1950, the two sides came close to a pitched battle over an opium shipment. Sarit arrived in person to escort the goods to Bangkok. In 1958, after he had seized power, Sarit decided the only way he could prevent his enemies launching a counter-coup was to buy them off with the proceeds of the year’s opium crop. In Alfred McCoy’s famous account, ‘Every available aircraft, truck, and automobile was pressed into service, and the hills of northern Thailand and Burma were picked clean.’

Sarit himself preferred alcohol. In 1954 an American diplomat reported on an official reception that ‘Gen. Sarit became grossly drunk as he has habitually at most social events’. He died of cirrhosis of the liver.

He also liked women. After his death, journalists tried to count all the mistresses, but gave up when the total reached 81. They catalogued these in books with titles like ‘The Field Marshal of the Gals’. Several of the mistresses were lodged and supported on the government payroll. At the same time, Sarit made a personal crusade of declaring prostitution illegal.

Before he seized power in 1957–8, Sarit presented himself as a liberal and a democrat. The Americans thought he was not only a lush and a libertine, but ‘soft on communism’. Sarit thought the American alarm about the spread of communism in Thailand was a joke because Thailand’s leftists were insignificant. But after he made his coup, all this changed. The Americans needed him because they needed a base in Thailand. Sarit needed the Americans because they were offering money. Only a few months after he had spoken to student meetings about democracy, he tore up the constitution, banned political parties, threw a thousand people in jail, prohibited meetings, censored the press, banned political parties, closed down bookshops, and ordered public executions. He told the Americans he was stopping communism. But many of those locked up had done nothing more than oppose Sarit himself and query his business activities.

There is a lot here to educate children of all ages. It is not that he was a bad man. There are lots of bad men. He was a very bad man who claimed to be a very good man, and who argued that Thailand needed strong leadership by ‘good’ men like himself. He is the model example of the ‘knight on a white horse’. He was surrounded by people who said things like ‘this country works better under an authority, not a tyrannical authority, but a unifying authority around which all elements of the nation can rally’ (Thanat Khoman).

Sarit was not Thailand’s first coup-maker, but he did more than anyone else to institutionalise the army’s dominance. He showed that the powerful can get away with anything. His revenue-gathering was an example to others. The generals who shot people on Ratchadamnoen in 1992 quoted from Sarit’s pronouncements when making their own coup. He promoted economic development which allowed powerful people to make profits without any serious restraint by law or regulation. The devastated forests and chaotic city are the result. He offered a model of male hypocrisy by imposing punishments on poor girls fallen into prostitution, while using his own power and wealth to collect women.

A course in Sarit Studies is a good idea. Here are some suggestions for the exam paper. Q1: How should people react when political cronies talk emotionally about the need for strong leadership and national unity? Q2: Is it a good idea to let political leaders become business monopolists, or vice versa? Q3: What should people do when media freedom is undermined, by any means?