Siam Faces West
'By ANGELA LEGG
IT is a little over a year since Siam recognised the Bao Dai regime in Vietnam and set her face towards the West. It was a bold moVe for a small Asian Power, and was made on the personal responsibility of the Prime Minister. Field-Marshal Pibul Songgram. Because of it his Foreign Minister resigned. It set the seal on Siam's anti-Communist policy, which in all its aspects has been Pibul's own policy, only supported with varying degrees of apathy by his Cabinet. It may seem a little puzzling, even in a military man, that he should commit his country so deeply (for this was the first of several moves, at a time when ' India was giving a lead to Asia in a middle-of-the-road policy)— the more so as it has always been Siam's tradition to sit on the fente, remaining friends with everyone and allying herself • with no one.
• The explanation usually offered is that Pibul recognised in the U.N. a means of freeing Siam of the need to perform her old balancing trick between the attempted encroachments of the Great Powers of the world. He decided that if fie-followed U.N. policy as the free world, and particularly America, understood it. supporting it in every way, he could not be swallowed up by any • one Power, nor incur their displeasure by his actions. This is what has happened. Siam has faithfully joined commissions of the U.N., sent troops and rice to Korea, refused to recognise Mao and tightened her watch on Communism all over the kingdom. She has only been the victim of intermittent radio attack by Peking and Moscow. These are the negative aspects of this policy.
The more positive aspects, however, are probably those which weighed with Pibul. They are, first, tlfat the anti-Communist policy of the Western Powers in the U.N. provided him with international approval for his anti-Chinese policy, since the majority of Communists in Siam are Chinese. Secondly, that U.S. and U.N. aid have been given to him to develop the country's ability to defend herself and to increase her productivity, so that she will have more rice for export to her neighbours. In effect, ' they have strengthened Pibul's position .as ruler of a country where changes of government have only been made by coup ' dela, in the past nineteen years, and in which arms and well- trained forces are essential to the man who wishes to remain in power. They have also strengthened his position with those who see in the hydraulic, dredging, building and agricultural schemes a short cut to big money rather than a means of pro- ducing a greater rice surplus.
Pibul's regime is dictatorial, repressive and corrupt. It favours the rich, powerful and unscrupulous. But he has a considerable measure of support in the absence of an •attractive alternative. For Siam is a prosperous, peaceful country, virtually undamaged by the war, and her poor do not starve. They are used to cor- ruption in the administration, and the stability provided by Pibul is appreciated by all but that small section of the community which would like a liberal or Socialist democracy, and those so- called Socialists who in reality are Moscow Communists. In addition, Pibul's anti-Communist policy, since it takes an anti- Chinese form, is welcome in a country where the Chinese have a stranglehold on the economy, represent a fifth of the total population and have a militant Government at home. There is great fear of an expansionist China.
Pibul, therefore, is in a strong position, and those who wish him ill lack the means to remove him. For many years he has been engaged in a personal duel with the only strong man besides himself to emerge from the coup-promoters of 1932, at which time the absolute monarchy was abolished in favour of a constitutional monarchy. This man, Pridi Panamyong, who fired the imagination of the Allies in the Second World War as Ruth. leader of the underground movement in Siam, is in exile, accused of implication in the death of King Ananda Mahidol in 1946, and, for the second time in twenty years. of Communism. Most foreigners believe that he could only return to power this time with the help of some outside Power. Yet Pibul himself is prepared to hint that he would be glad if Pridi could be brought back into the fold.
Clearly, this would have the great advantage of neutralising a centre of disaffection in the country which gathers round it many professional people and young men of education and intelligence and sometimes the Navy. However, coup trials and rumours of attempted new coups such as the one on March 8th, of which Admiral Thaharn Kamhiran, a former head of the Marine Corps, was said to be the instigator, continue, and lend vivid justification for the presence of police armed with tommy- guns at street-corners, outside important buildings and indeed in most street. It is said, however, that Pibul's intelligence service is so good that no coup could ever be successful. Yet in Siam the most stable and secure to all appearance have fallen from power, no matter what precautions by force, violence or intelligence they took.
But Pibul has travelled a long way since the days of 1942 when he saw himself as dictator of Siam, modernising the country with ruthless speed on Fascist lines. Today the police still goose- step. Some people say they learnt it from the Chinese, and that Chiang Kai-shek learnt it from the Japanese, who learnt it from the Germans. And there is much to suggest that Siam is a police State. But however much Pibul may once have liked to think of himself as the dictator of Siam, he now spares no effort to show that Siam is a constitutional monarchy in which he, as Prime Minister, has extremely limited powers. In practice it is not always easy to see what limits these powers. There are so many ways of influencing, or simply circumventing, a Parliament which suggestively sits in a gilded Byzantine throne-hall. But he is never tired of pointing out that his hands are bound by democratic procedure.
Yet the wind blows from the West, and we hear much of welfare activities, illiteracy campaigns, hospitals being opined. irrigation, farming and nutrition schemes, maternity work. malaria campaigns in conjunction with the U.N. organisations centred in Bangkok. We also hear of the Thai Labour Union, the official trade union set up by Pibul to protect the Siamese workers from the tough, well-organised and self-seeking Chinese trade union which is controlled by the Communists and is no longer officially recognised. This is the measure of Pibul's adjustment to the new world around him. It is a world in which great nations vie with one another in planning the welfare of their citizens and in which health, education and full employment are the tests of good government. If the many schemes mooted, planned and put in hand were really effected, Siam would indeed be a model State •
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