Diplomat. Business executive. Constitution writer. Twice prime minister and savior of Thailand’s democracy. Anand Panyarachun has no problem with this distillation of his professional life—except for the last. True, he served as his country’s prime minister from March 1991 to April 1992 and again for four months from June to October in 1992. But Anand would not agree that he saved Thailand. "If you look at the political history of societies, you will find that democracy is a long and arduous process that is sometimes painful and requires a process of maturation. The development of democratic systems in Thailand is due to the efforts of many forces in Thai society, and not to any one single individual." The most he will accept is that his stewardship of the country during the tumultuous period after the military coup d’état served as a catalyst to promote a firmer foundation for Thai democracy.

Retired from the diplomatic service after twenty-three years, British-educated Anand was running a textile-based conglomerate, Saha-Union Public Company, when the generals who overthrew the government of Chatichai Choonhavan asked him to lead the country. Out of a call of duty, Anand agreed and proceeded to lead a government regarded as one of Thailand’s cleanest and most competent. When he stepped down after overseeing national elections in 1992, he thought the country was back on track. But the victorious parties eventually nominated General Suchinda Kraprayoon, one of the coup leaders, as prime minister. Angered by what they saw as the army’s second coup, Bangkok residents took to the streets in protest. A bloody crackdown ensued and, through a royal decree, Anand was nominated to return as prime minister of Thailand. When he slipped back to private life after his second term as prime minister, the country had a popularly elected civilian prime minister and the army’s influence on political and business life was on the wane. Afterwards, Anand helped institutionalize the reforms he started by serving as chair of the Constitution Drafting Committee that was tasked with formulating Thailand’s new constitution.

Anand was born on August 9, 1932, two months after Thailand’s absolute monarchy was abolished. His father, Phya Prichanusat, was a member of an established family that distinguished itself in service to the monarchy. His forebears belonged to the Mon people of Myanmar, a tribe known for its fighting skills. They settled in Potharam Village in Thailand’s Ratchaburi Province, an area with a significant Mon population. Phya Prichanusat’s father, Phya Dhepprachun, served the kingdom as undersecretary of defense, equivalent to the rank of permanent secretary today. King Rama V, who ruled from 1868 to 1910, bestowed the family name "Panyarachun" (originally spelled Panyarjun) on him. "Panya means wisdom," explains Anand. "Arachun (Arjun) is the name of the hero of the [Hindu epic] Ramayana." Early on, Phya Dhepprachun’s son also distinguished himself. Phya Prichanusat won a King’s Scholarship to study in England, where he stayed for eight years.

"My father went to a school called Shrewsbury, which is considered one of the leading public schools in England," Anand recalls. "Then he proceeded to Manchester University because at that time only the sons and daughters of the king could go to Oxford or Cambridge University, while commoners on the King’s Scholarships had to attend provincial universities." One of Phya Prichanusat’s professors at Manchester was Chaim Azriel Weizmann, the founding president of Israel. After completing his education, Phya Prichanusat returned to Thailand and joined the kingdom’s Ministry of Education. He taught in schools and helped set up an institute in the northern province of Chiang Mai. He later became headmaster of Vajiravudh College, a distinguished boarding school modeled after the English public school system, and was eventually promoted to the highest civil service post of permanent secretary at the Ministry of Education.

After a group of junior military officers and civilian officials staged the coup in June 1932 that brought King Rama VII’s absolute authority to an end (and ushered in the era of constitutional monarchy), Phya Prichanusat resigned from the civil service and set up a publishing house named Thai Panichakarn. He launched two newspapers, one in Chinese and the other in English. Phya Prichanusat also served as editor of the English daily, the Siam Chronicle, which is the forerunner of today’s Bangkok Post. As president of the National Press Association, he advocated freedom of the press and institutionalized press codes of conduct.

Anand’s mother, Khunying Pruek Prichanusat, also came from a distinguished family. "She did not have much formal education beyond secondary school," he says. "At that time, education was not widespread among young girls and women. But definitely she had brains. She traveled around the world with my father and was exposed to a wealth of cultures. She enjoyed following domestic events, and in particular political events. She was the family disciplinarian, whereas Phya Prichanusat was the family teacher. "My father, being a school teacher, enjoyed talking to his children. He transmitted his knowledge and life experiences to them." The children liked to listen to him reminisce about his life at Shrewsbury, how he had to take cold baths every morning, and the games he played in the sports-oriented school. "He told us about his life at Manchester, and what a wonderful professor Weizmann was."

Phya Prichanusat was Anand’s role model. "Whatever he did, he enjoyed doing it," says his son. "He was an opera buff. He would play opera music for us. He would tell us the story of Aida and Carmen and La Traviata. He enjoyed Thai music too and he used to perform a khon, a classical Thai dance, for the king. He was a learned man and I think he was one of the very few individuals who combined the best of the East and the West. He was not just a Western-educated man. He had his roots deep in his own culture. He appreciated Thai literature." Phya Prichanusat also acted in plays written by King Rama VI, who reigned from 1910 to 1925. When World War II broke out in 1941 and the Japanese later occupied Thailand, there were no English-language movies, very few stage performances, no Thai classical dance, and no new opera records. Phya Prichanusat turned to Chinese opera. "He loved music," says his son.

Anand grew up in a close-knit family of seven sisters and five brothers. His eldest brother was eighteen and attending law school in France when Anand, the youngest and twelfth child, was born. "We had a large house in Bangkok because the family was so large," Anand recounts. "The rooms were big and we did not close the doors because there were no air conditioners and you needed cross-ventilation." The children slept in pairs under a mosquito net. "All my brothers and sisters were close and we enjoyed our time with my parents. It was a warm and happy family." His father had an Austin, a little car that had to be cranked up. He would come round in the afternoon to pick up Anand and his elder brother from their elementary school at the other end of town.

It was a carefree childhood, even during the Japanese occupation. "I didn’t see any real brutalities," says Anand, who was nine when the war started. "I was amused at the way that [the Japanese] would dress in loin cloths, the way they loved to eat bananas, and the strict orders and strict discipline they followed." But there were scary moments. Flares would occasionally stab the sky as planes came on bombing runs. "Wherever [the flares] would land, that was where the target would be." Although the family had a bomb shelter, Anand’s parents decided that it was safer to move to the suburbs. Anand continued his studies at the satellite campus of Bangkok Christian College, which was near his new home. Founded by Presbyterian missionaries, the school enjoyed a good academic reputation. Anand completed high school at the main campus of Bangkok Christian after the family moved back to the capital when the war ended.

At sixteen, Anand followed in his father’s footsteps and went to England to study. His eldest brother had long since come back from France, while the second eldest son had gone to the Philippines for two years before going to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. The third son studied law at Thammasat University in Bangkok and then left for the United States as well. The fourth brother was sent to the United States too. "In England it was clear there would be more suffering because of the rationing, but my father decided that his youngest son had to go to England," says Anand. "I should have gone to his old school, but because of the uncertain situation, he opted for a school near London." Dulwich College was more of a day school than a boarding school. Anand was one of two hundred boarders; the rest of some one thousand students were day students.

Dulwich College was a socially progressive school. "At that time, we had a headmaster who entertained some socialist ideas and he experimented with Local Authorities’ scholarships for students from lower income families," explains Anand. "And it turned out to be successful because he got top students"—even if they did not have the "right" accent or background. These egalitarian issues were initially lost on Anand, a young Thai student at that time. He could hardly understand what was said to him or make himself understood. He discovered that the English he learned in school back home was inadequate. "I had a terrible time the first year," says Anand. "When other boys took an hour to do their homework, I had to take four hours."

Extra lessons, hard work, and the desire to do well eventually paid off. Anand became the school prefect, captain of the tennis team, and a member of the squash team. "I played a bit of cricket, but I was not that good. I liked watching the game." He was also in the choir. After Dulwich, Anand was accepted at Cambridge University’s Trinity College. "At that time, the admission process was competitive, but perhaps not as much as today. I was an adequate student at Dulwich. I did not like a lot of subjects such as geography, science, chemistry, physics, and I did not learn Latin." But the headmaster, who was aware of his leadership qualities, wrote him a good recommendation, which impressed the dons at Trinity.

"When I went up to Cambridge, I did not know what I would be interested in," says Anand. "All I knew was that, at the end of the day, I wanted to join government, perhaps the foreign service." He decided to read law. Because he did not know Latin, he opted not to study Roman law, the traditional first part of the law course. He did economics instead. He did not really like studying economics either, but completed the class work and moved on to law proper. He completed his degree with Third Class Honours.

Anand brought back more than a degree to Thailand. "Having spent seven years in England, having been through public school life, having seen British traditions and idiosyncrasies, I suppose it must have affected my way of thinking and my way of life," he says. "I was attracted to the experiment of the Master at Dulwich, the idea of giving opportunities to the less endowed but competent students. Equality, sense of fair play, and providing opportunities and choices to all sectors of society were concepts that I embraced. I must have inherited something from my father, who perhaps had these qualities imbued in his character. It turns out that throughout my entire life, the concept of social justice governed my thinking, personal philosophy, and decision making."

Phya Prichanusat wanted his son to take graduate studies in the United States. He told Anand: "For you to join the foreign service, you’ve got to know the Americans because they will become the dominant power in foreign relations." By then the new Cambridge graduate had wooed and won the heart of M. R. Sodsee Chakrabandh, a Thai student in London. M. R. Sodsee had returned to Bangkok and Anand did not want to be away from her for two years. He proposed traveling around America for three months instead. His father agreed. "I did that with three friends," Anand recounts. "We went to New York, bought a 1953 Mercury, and drove to New Jersey, down to Miami, then New Orleans, Texas, Arizona, up to Los Angeles and San Francisco, where we sold the car. Then we flew to Hawaii."

It was a crash course in the mores and manners of a superpower in 1955. "I had never seen so many gas stations in my life," says Anand. He saw instances of discrimination against African Americans everywhere in America, but did not experience it himself. "I was impressed with Las Vegas and San Francisco. And contrary to my earlier-formed opinion about the South, I found it to be warm, congenial, and very friendly. In contrast to the Northeasterners, who were more formal, the Southerners were very warm; they took a genuine interest in you. I also liked the Southern drawl. It was very appealing." Years later, in 1964, he would return to New York to work in Thailand’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, where he would eventually become ambassador and Thai permanent representative to the United Nations. He would be posted for twelve consecutive years in America, the last three as ambassador to the United States-cum-permanent representative to the United Nations.

Anand returned to Thailand to join the foreign ministry and marry M. R. Sodsee. "I was one of the first from the postwar generation to come back with an overseas degree, so there were plenty of opportunities to get into any ministry—foreign affairs, finance, industry, anything." Why the foreign service? "I suppose it was the glamour and the idea of living abroad that was attractive," says Anand. At the ministry, he was marked for special attention. One day in 1959, the foreign affairs minister, Dr. Thanat Khoman, called Anand to his office and asked him to serve as his secretary. "I was taken aback," says Anand. "He did not know me personally, although he was a student of law in France at the same as my eldest brother, so he knew my eldest brother." The minister was looking for a well-educated young man who was fluent in English and Anand fit the bill.

Being secretary to the minister was a big responsibility for a twenty-seven-year-old. (Previous incumbents of the post were middle-ranking diplomats in their forties.) "I was the front-door man," says Anand. "Everything that went to him had to go through me." It was excellent training for higher office. "As time went by, I would sit in meetings with other foreign ministers and take notes." The minister became my mentor. "I learned a lot from him, from his honesty, his integrity, and his vision," says Anand. After five years, he was sent to Thailand’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York as first secretary. "My minister was charting my career for me. He himself had spent a number of years in New York and he said that United Nations work is a good training ground." Anand’s wife and two daughters, Nanda, born in 1958, and Daranee, born in 1962, lived with Anand in Manhattan.

At thirty-five, Anand was appointed ambassador to Canada and acting permanent representative to the United Nations. His family moved to Ottawa. "The girls were growing up and I wanted them to be exposed to other environments," so Anand commuted back and forth from Ottawa to New York during the next three years to fulfill his concurrent assignments. In 1972 he was appointed Thailand’s ambassador to the United States and concurrently permanent representative to the United Nations. It was a sensitive time to be in Washington DC. Thailand had been persuaded to host US military bases in support of the American war in Vietnam. "I saw the buildup of the American military presence in Vietnam and Thailand at a distance," says Anand. "I did not experience with my own eyes the R & R episodes"—US soldiers were blamed for the growth of the sex industry in Thailand. "I just read the New York Times and saw dispatches from the foreign ministry. On the other hand, I became closer and closer to the protest movement [against the Vietnam War] in the States."

At the time, there were bloody clashes between students and police in American college campuses. Television showed saturation bombing of Vietnamese cities. "As time went by, as I saw more brutality, more atrocities, and the insanity of war, I began to feel there was no military solution," says Anand. "And then I saw that more and more Americans were turning against their government. To me that spelled disaster for Thailand—to be overcommitted to something which was being eroded every day by internal forces, particularly by the U.S. Congress." Thailand’s agreement with the Americans was explicit: The bases were there in connection with the prosecution of the American war in Vietnam. "So once the war in Vietnam was about to come to an end, the implication was quite clear," says Anand. "There was no further need to have the American bases in Thailand."

It was thus Anand who implemented the withdrawal of the US bases. Anand returned home in 1976 to become permanent secretary of foreign affairs. "The policy had been formulated by [Prime Minister] Kukrit [Pramoj], so I was there to implement it," says Anand. "As the withdrawal affected the vested interests of a lot of people, I became the target of a lot of attacks." Relations with Washington were already strained because of the Mayaguez Incident in 1975. "The Americans decided to deploy this particular ship from Thai waters to rescue some U.S. military personnel in Cambodia, without permission from the Thai government," Anand explains. "Kukrit was very miffed by it, so he called me back for consultation. He asked me not to return to Washington as a signal of our unhappiness and protest." Anand was given the temporary assignment of starting the process of restoring Thailand’s ties with China. As permanent secretary, he was also involved in negotiations to renew diplomatic relations with postwar Vietnam (the last American soldier fled Saigon some two weeks before the Mayaguez Incident) and Laos.

Anand’s role in all this somehow planted in the public mind that he was anti-American and pro-communist. "Don’t forget, we were brought up to see communism as evil and to hate China and to hate Vietnam," he says. "So the suspicion was there: ‘What are these guys doing?’ First, you abandon Taiwan and restore relations with China. Secondly, you kick out the Americans, who portrayed themselves as victims of this anti-American cartel in the foreign ministry." Sections of the Thai military were also hostile. The army staged a coup in October 1976. "We knew it was coming," says Anand. "We warned the foreign minister at that time not to go to Vietnam because we knew that certain sections of the military establishment could not tolerate good relations between Thailand and Vietnam. To them, Vietnam was an enemy country with aggressive designs, a country that supported the subversive activities of the Thai-Vietnamese community." Moreover, an enemy was needed to replace China, to shore up the army’s prestige and justify its huge military budget.

Such naked power grabs were not new in Thailand in the decades following the end of absolute monarchy in 1932. At that time, the cabal of junior officers ostensibly ushered in a constitutional monarchy that presided over a democratic system. In reality, the military, the most cohesive force in Thailand, wielded the real power. The generals either ruled directly or appointed civilians acting under their direction. Eventually one military faction would get restive and launch a coup. Between 1932 and 1973, different sets of generals or colonels tried to grab power seventeen times and succeeded in eleven instances. During the same period, Thailand promulgated twelve constitutions and saw nearly twenty changes of government. For fifteen straight years, the country was ruled by two strongmen who outlawed political parties and elections: Sarit Thanarat (1958–1963) and Thanom Kittikachorn (1963–1973).

A student-led revolt overthrew Thanom’s autocratic rule on October 14, 1973. A caretaker civilian government held elections in 1975, which was contested by forty-two political parties. Seni Pramoj became prime minister for four months. When he lost a vote of confidence, his younger brother Kukrit Pramoj cobbled together another coalition government. Kukrit, whose administration Anand served as permanent secretary of foreign affairs, presided over the withdrawal of US forces, implemented a national minimum wage, lifted laws against communism, and introduced a village-level development program. "In retrospect, you could say that the Kukrit government was moving faster than the thinking of the people," says Anand. It was certainly far ahead of the army.

The resulting coup in 1976 was the bloodiest in Thailand’s history. Backed by the military, thousands of students affiliated with extreme rightist organizations attacked other students at Thammasat University. "The brutality came as a shock [to me]," says Anand. "It was then that I knew that my term as permanent secretary would come to an end." The generals who took control of the country appointed Supreme Court justice Thanin Kraivichien prime minister. A doctrinaire anticommunist, he immediately set to work uprooting suspected communist sympathizers in government. Anand was one of the victims. "The [new] foreign minister came to the office, called me, and said that [I had been] suspended and that he had been asked to set up a panel [of Anand’s peers] to investigate," he recalls.

There were sensational stories in the newspapers. It took some three months for the panel (led by the permanent secretary of the prime minister’s office, with the permanent secretaries of defense and of communications as members) to wrap up its investigation. "Dr. Thanat was a witness, Kukrit was a witness too, Chatichai [Choonhavan, foreign minister in 1975–1976] was a witness, Bichai [Rattakul, foreign minister in 1976] was a witness—all on my behalf," says Anand. In the end, the panel of peers concluded that the accusations were unfounded. According to civil service rules, Anand should have been reinstated to his post. He was named ambassador-at-large instead. "I did not want to make a case of it," he says. "At that time, I [felt] I had to leave the country." The investigation was particularly traumatic for his wife.

The foreign minister proposed to send him to London, where many young Thais were studying, but the then prime minister did not want Anand there for fear that he might "brainwash" the students. Germany was deemed a "safer" post, so Anand was assigned to Bonn in 1977. After a year in Germany, where he had a chance to do a lot of reflection, he resigned from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1978.

He decided to chart a new career in the private sector in 1979 when he accepted the post of vice-chair of the Saha-Union Group. A colleague and friend, Amnuay Viravan, was chair of the conglomerate, whose forty or so subsidiaries make textiles, shoes, garments, plastics, computer parts, and other consumer items. Amnuay had been permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance and, like Anand, was also probed by a panel of his peers. Although well respected for his integrity, Amnuay was accused of alleged corruption. He was completely cleared of the allegations but resigned from the civil service anyway.

"When he heard that I was about to leave too, he came to Bonn with the founder of Saha-Union Group and we had a talk," says Anand. This was Damri Darakananda, a self-made man who began as a maker of zippers and buttons. Anand actually received many other offers—Thai corporations are always on the lookout for people with good connections in the bureaucracy. "I made up my mind that I would not join any group that undertook business with the government," says Anand. "Saha-Union did not have anything to do with the state." He was so disillusioned that he completely cut himself off from national affairs. "I became an alien in my own country," he says. "I lost interest in what was going on in Thailand. I just paid my taxes and did my work. I did not want to have anything to do with the Thai government or with Thailand as a whole. I just wanted to shut it out, because my recent experience with public life was traumatic."

Anand threw his energies into corporate affairs. He, Amnuay, and Damri functioned as a tri-member management leadership team. "I was more on the policy side of management and investments, even though I had to learn the operational process. The first year or two was a learning process." Anand was also named chair or board director of several Saha-Union subsidiaries, including Union Thread Industries, Union Textile Industries, and Union Plastic. In 1980 his friend Amnuay was prevailed upon to serve the government again as minister of finance, so Anand became Saha-Union Group chair. He also served on industry and other business bodies, including the Association of Thai Industries, the ASEAN Chambers of Commerce, the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand, and the ASEAN-US Business Council. When Anand was asked to be prime minister of Thailand in 1991, he was in the midst of holding a fund-raising event for the Old England Students Association, of which he was president.

When Anand was ambassador to Germany in 1977, another coup had ousted the rightist Thanin as prime minister and replaced him with General Kriangsak Chamanon. After elections were held in 1979, Kriangsak managed to put together a coalition that kept him in power. But his handling of the economy—Thailand suffered from two-digit inflation, a soaring budget deficit, and a 60 percent increase in oil prices—eroded his support in Parliament and the armed forces. Kriangsak was replaced in 1980 by his defense minister, army commander-in-chief Prem Tinsulanond, who had a reputation for incorruptibility. Although not an elected member of Parliament (MP), Prem was acceptable to both Parliament and the military. He put down coup attempts in 1981 and 1985 and, for a time, it seemed Thailand’s culture of military takeovers was on the wane. In 1988, Prem paved the way for a smooth transfer of power to an elected prime minister when he decided to retire from office despite pleas for him to stay on.

The MP who replaced Prem was Chatichai Choonhavan, who was briefly foreign minister when Anand was permanent secretary in 1976. A former army general, Chatichai became the first elected legislator to become prime minister in more than a decade. Under his stewardship, the economic gains Prem nurtured in his eight years at the helm continued at a brisk pace. Thailand’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 10 percent per annum as Chatichai pursued liberalization and privatization policies. The country was held up as proof that economic development and democracy could coexist and were not mutually exclusive, as maintained by authoritarian regimes in Asia and elsewhere. But there were strains under the rosy headline numbers. Thailand’s freewheeling press described Chatichai and his officials as the "buffet cabinet" that feasted on bribes and commissions from juicy contracts as Thailand upgraded its telecommunications, roads, railways, media, and oil-refining infrastructure. There were complaints as well about rampant vote-buying as politicians paid out money in a big way, knowing they could get back what they spent many times over once they were in power.

Chatichai had also grown heedless of the military, believing that its role as power broker had been broken. He angered the army when he broke a promise to dismiss close adviser Chalerm Yubamrung, who had provoked numerous run-ins with the top brass. On February 23, 1991, Armed Forces Supreme Commander Sunthorn Kongsompong and Army Commander-in-Chief Suchinda Kraprayoon declared martial law and dismissed the elected government. Chatichai was arrested as he boarded a plane that was to take him to the country’s north for an audience with the king. Weary of the blatant corruption and abuses of the electoral system, the public greeted the takeover with muted support. But the generals knew they had to bolster their democratic credentials to win the citizenry’s enthusiastic backing, gain the king’s tacit approval, and restore the confidence of foreign investors.

The sixteen-man military junta, known as the National Peace-Keeping Council (NPKC), began to look for a credible leader who was well-regarded within and outside Thailand. To Anand’s surprise, the generals sounded him out for the post of prime minister. Presumably as a representative of business, he had been named to a thirty-person panel composed of prominent Thais from all sectors of society to advise the junta about its next steps. While at the meeting of the advisory body’s economic group six days after the coup, a colonel approached Anand and asked him to see the NPKC chair. "When I came out, I saw General Suchinda [who was NPKC vice-chair] standing outside the room, and he said to me very casually, ‘Pi [Elder Brother], please be prime minister.’"

Anand first met Suchinda in Washington, when he was ambassador to the United States and Suchinda was a lieutenant colonel assigned as an assistant military attaché. Suchinda would come to the ambassador’s house when he entertained military missions. "I liked him because he was a jolly fellow and very entertaining," says Anand. They lost touch for about ten years after Anand was called back to Bangkok to be permanent secretary and then posted to Germany. They saw each other at some social occasions after Suchinda returned to Thailand. "Between 1973 and 1991, I saw him about four or five times," says Anand, including a visit of condolence Suchinda made when Anand’s mother died.

As Anand tells it, the junta had not initially thought of him for the position of prime minister. "The story I heard—and I am inclined to give credence to that story—was that my name was not in their thinking at all from the beginning. When it came to the point that they wanted a civilian prime minister they thought of two or three other civilians, and my name was not there. So it is not true that because of our association in Washington, Suchinda thought of me. My name cropped up at a certain private dinner that Suchinda had with some friends of his who happened to hear of me or knew of me. When my name was mentioned, Suchinda said, ‘Of course, why didn’t we think of him?’" At their first meeting, Anand was impressed that Suchinda did not place any conditions on the offer. Anand asked for some time over the weekend to think it over.

But the general phoned the next day, which was a Saturday. "It was about ten o’clock and I was about to go to work," Anand recounts. "He said, ‘Pi Pi, what is your answer because we have an audience with the king this afternoon in Chiang Mai ?’" I said, ‘Well, that is not what we agreed upon. I said over the weekend.’ He said, ‘No, no, the king has just given us an audience in the late afternoon, so I need your answer now.’" Anand was concerned about some of the junta’s plans, which he had read about from the morning newspapers. One was that the NPKC would appoint members of the legislature, which would be tasked with drafting a new constitution, without input from the prime minister. Another was a provision in the interim Constitution that implied the prime minister had the authority to order extrajudicial execution.

Suchinda said he did not know about these plans. "That really confirmed my earlier assessment that the longer you allowed this thing to drift, there would be greater chaos, political chaos in the country. "The left hand did not know what the right hand was doing, and the right hand was not interested in what the left hand had planned." Under pressure to accept the nomination that day, Anand said yes. He had not even had the time to talk things over with his wife, who still remembered the difficulties of 1976 and was not looking forward to her husband’s return to public life. "I thought the coup d’état conveyed the wrong signals to the business community," explains Anand. "I thought that if I accepted, at least I could help reverse the erosion of confidence that had negatively impacted the Thai economy."

The appointment of a business leader with wide experience in the bureaucracy and foreign affairs was positively received. The optimism became stronger when the prime minister announced his cabinet. Only seven members were active military officers; the rest were respected technocrats and retired senior bureaucrats. "They [the NPKC] gave me a free hand, except in a few things, including the defense, interior, and communications portfolios," says Anand. General Issarapong Noonpakdi, who was the NPKC’s secretary, was appointed minister of the interior. But Anand insisted on a civilian, Nukul Prachuabmoh, at the Ministry of Communications, which was overseeing a huge project to install three million telephone lines in Bangkok and the provinces. Two active generals, however, were named deputy communications ministers. Anand followed three criteria in making his selection. First, honesty and integrity. Second, experience in the civil service because his government would serve only until elections were held. And third, a liberal mindset on both economic and political reforms.

From the first, Anand sought to define his government as transparent and clean. "I had good intentions and I had a sense of duty," he says. "From the beginning, I made up my mind that it had to be an honest relationship between me and the military. So I told them, ‘I want you to know that I am an open guy and I do things in a straightforward way. Whatever I do, I will try to explain to you. But I am a very independent person.’" This was on the day he accepted the premiership, when he was having dinner with the junta, none of whom he had met before except for Suchinda. "That night I told them that General Chatichai must be released soon. Second, the state of emergency must be lifted." He made a public announcement of the initiatives after the meeting. "I set up the game plan from the very first day," says Anand. He would explain what he wanted to do, but he would not seek the junta’s endorsement.

Anand knew he could be dismissed any time. "The only thing that would save me, should there be a showdown between me and the military, would be the public’s support. And I built it up to such an extent that towards the end, when some of [the generals] wanted to remove me, they felt that it would be unwise." But he did not needlessly oppose the junta. "If I sensed that what I was planning to do might create some problems, then I would meet with them and explain." Chatichai’s cabinet had approved the telephone project’s privatization, with conglomerate Charoen Phokphan winning the bid. Nukul, Anand’s communications minister, wanted to review the deal. But one of his deputies, General Viroj Sangsanit, who was deputy secretary-general of the NPKC, said the government should honor the agreement. "I called a small meeting with five [key] generals and eventually they said, ‘We leave it to you,’" says Anand. The prime minister sided with Nukul, and the government got better terms after the huge contract was renegotiated. But no compromise was possible in some instances. Anand earned the enmity of the air force when he turned down its request to buy a squadron of AMX jet fighters because the government could not afford it.

When Anand’s term ended a year later, he had won almost universal approval. "Anand’s independence was unprecedented for a civilian who had been placed in power by a military coup," writes Clark D. Neher, who is a professor of political science and an associate of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. "Indeed, his administration turned out to be one of the most effective in modern Thai politics. From March 1 to December 6, 1991, the government passed 127 new laws, compared to 105 in the 30 months of the preceding Chatichai government. From December till the end of his term [in April 1992], Anand’s legislative record was just as proactive. His administration set forth measures supporting privatization, trade liberalization, elimination of onerous restrictions on the economy, tax reform focusing on a value added tax (VAT) of 7%, labor constraints including the abolition of state enterprise unions, and infrastructure projects." Anand also expanded press freedom, moved to fight HIV/AIDS, passed a comprehensive law protecting the environment, and granted incentives to philanthropy and the private sector to support education.

Anand says he merely pushed things along. "There were some initiatives that were in the pipeline for quite some time, including the value-added tax, but it took political will to go through with them." Anand’s hands were tied in one important area, however. The junta reserved for itself the process of writing a new constitution, which it placed in the hands of the National Legislative Assembly whose members it handpicked. The final draft gave the NPKC the power to appoint a Senate equal in power with an elected lower house. The junta was also given the interim authority to nominate the prime minister, who did not need to be an elected MP. Protesters took to the streets, forcing the National Legislative Assembly to reduce the size of the Senate, scrap a clause allowing voting for party slates rather than individual candidates, and withdraw a provision allowing bureaucrats and military officers to join the cabinet without resigning their positions. For good measure, Suchinda promised that no one in the NPKC would become prime minister.

Anand’s government held the elections in March 1992. It put in place an electoral watchdog system to keep the polls clean, but could do little about money politics because the new Constitution had failed to address this issue specifically. "The election was fair and free, but it was a disappointment in the sense that unsavory people still got elected," Anand says. While blatant fraud such as ballot stuffing was prevented, vote-buying, especially by parties linked to the junta, was difficult to pin down and stop. Nevertheless, Thailand successfully made the transition from a military-appointed government to one elected by the people, however imperfect the electoral process. His work done, Anand resumed his post as chair of Saha-Union and returned to the less complicated world of private life.

But his country would call on him again. The pro-military parties, which won a narrow victory, nominated Narong Wongwan as prime minister, but he declined the post after the United States confirmed that it had denied him a visa in 1991 because of his alleged involvement in drug trafficking. The premiership was then offered to Suchinda, who accepted it in April despite his promise that no one in the junta would take the top post. Protests broke out. Unmoved, Suchinda proceeded to name a cabinet of wealthy business executives and military leaders with little distinction. Then Chamlong Srimuang, the popular leader of the Buddhist-inspired Bangkok party Palang Dharma, went on a hunger strike to push Parliament into amending the Constitution so that only an elected MP could become prime minister. That would rule out Suchinda, unless he ran for office. Tens of thousands of middle-class Thais took to the streets to express solidarity with Chamlong.

A solution appeared within reach when the ruling coalition notified the king on May 10, 1992, that it would table the amendment. But the five pro-government parties reneged on the commitment the next day, causing an outraged citizenry to pour into the streets again. Suchinda imposed a state of emergency, arrested Chamlong, and mobilized the army to impose order. Shots were fired into the crowd, killing nearly a hundred people. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the popular monarch whose carefully chosen words carry much weight in Thailand, called Suchinda and Chamlong to the palace. Television images showed the two men prostrated before the throne as the king asked them to iron out their differences. Suchinda resigned. The ruling coalition then nominated Somboon Rahong as prime minister, an elected MP and retired air marshal. When the king signed the appointment papers on June 10, however, the name on them was Anand’s.

"The president of the Parliament [Arthit Urairat] nominated me," explains Anand. According to newspaper reports, Arthit had brought to the palace documents with Somboon’s name, but at the last minute substituted papers nominating Anand for royal approval. The king cannot directly intervene in political appointments, but he can exert moral suasion. "I am relieved," Somboon gamely told the reporters he had invited to his home to celebrate his expected appointment. For Anand’s part, he would have preferred to fade quietly into private life, but like the rest of the nation, he was appalled by the violence in May. To this day, however, he believes that Suchinda was forced by circumstances to accept the premiership. "I think he has some good qualities," says Anand. "I happen to believe that he did not want to inherit the mantle of power."

Anand II, as his second government was known, to distinguish it from Anand I, lasted four months. Many in Thailand would have liked Anand’s steady hand on the nation’s affairs for far longer, but Anand’s agenda was to hold elections as soon as possible and turn over power to a new Parliament. There was a stronger prospect that money politics would not play too big a role this time around because resources had been exhausted in the March polls. After only three weeks in office, Anand dissolved Parliament and set September 13 as the date for a new general election. The Constitution was amended so that only an elected MP could be prime minister. The appointed Senate’s powers were clipped. The generals blamed for the violent response to the May protests were quietly sidelined. Anand also disbanded the army’s peace-keeping force in Bangkok and transferred their duties to the police, whose crowd control capabilities were strengthened with new equipment and training.

The Democrat Party emerged as victor in the September election and its leader, the unassuming Chuan Leekpai, became prime minister. A relieved Anand returned to private life. He was on the national stage again in 1993 when a former Supreme Court justice sued him for supposedly sitting on his appointment to higher office during his term as prime minister. Thais from all stations in life and even foreign diplomats rushed to Anand’s defense. Anand was cleared in 1997. By then he had been called back to national service for the third time. Thailand had decided to draft a new constitution and Anand was appointed as one of the body’s twenty-three experts. The rest of the ninety-nine-member Constitution Drafting Assembly was elected by the people in December 1996.

The constitutional delegates elected Anand as chair of the drafting committee. "Being the chairman, you could influence the proceedings, but whether such and such a clause, whether such and such a concept would be included in the draft had to depend on the majority, of which I had no control," says Anand. "I always remained a very neutral chairman, in the sense that I would not go out of my way to try to convince members of the committee as to which way they should go. I would engage in discussion to facilitate the process of gaining further understanding of the points." The assembly had prepared a constitution that, among other things, had created an electoral body to detect vote-buying and prosecute errant candidates. The document was promulgated as the new Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand on October 11, 1997.

Will Anand ever return to politics? "I was never really in politics," he told Asiaweek magazine in October 1997. "I was brought into it. I enjoyed the work that I did as prime minister. I think I did some good for the country, but I did not enjoy this kind of life. Politics is the art of the possible. In the process, you have to engage in political maneuverings. That is not my cup of tea. Further, my family would not want me to take up politics again." In the end, it is only the people who can make democracy work in Thailand. They will have succeeded when no one thinks that the country needs an Anand III.

Cesar R. Bacani Jr.

REFERENCES

Anand Panyarachun. "I Would Avoid Garbage in My Way." Interview by Suthichai Yoon and Chirmsak Pinthong. Nation (Bangkok), April 26, 1993.

_________. Interview by James R. Rush. Tape recording. September 2, 1997. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila.

_________. "It’s a Good Starting Point." Interview by Julian Gearing. Asiaweek, October 10, 1997.

_________. "Question and Answer Session with the Prime Minister." Transcript. Dinner address before the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, Bangkok, July 1, 1992.

Neher, Clark D. "Political Succession in Thailand." Asian Survey 22, no. 7 (July 1992): 585–605.

Suchit Bunbongkarn. "Coping with Military Guardianship." Asian Survey 33, no. 2 (February 1992): 131–139.

Sukhumbhand Paribatra. "State and Society in Thailand: How Fragile the Democracy?" Asian Survey 13, no. 9 (September 1993): 879–893.