As part of the extensive celebrations of the centenary of Professor Dr. Puey Ungphakorn (1916-1999), Thammasat University has reprinted his writings, including two essential texts for understanding his contributions to Thailand. The third edition of Best Wishes for Asia: a Chronicle of Hope from Womb to Tomb / Puey Ungphakorn Speaks Out on Peace, Decency, and Freedom was compiled by Khun Sulak Sivaraksa, with afterwords by Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri and Ajarn Rangsan Thanapornpan; it was first published in 1975. A Siamese For All Seasons: Collected Articles By And About Puey Ungphakorn first appeared in 1981 and is now in its seventh edition. While earlier editions of these two important books are already available in the Thammasat University Libraries collection, the attractive and handy new paperback format is especially appealing, and should draw new readers. A preface dated August 2016 to A Siamese For All Seasons, written by Khun Sulak Sivaraksa, reminds us that Puey’s centenary year was also the 40th anniversary of the Thammasat Massacre. This tragic event was intervowen with Ajarn Puey’s personal and professional destiny. Khun Sulak rightly notes that Ajarn Puey was deemed the father of modern Thai economic development. Yet his contributions were much more extensive, in addition to serving as TU rector and dean of the TU Faculty of Economics :
Most people don’t know that Dr. Puey played a crucial role in the arts and culture. He spearheaded the construction of the Silpa Bhirasri Art Museum, the first of its kind in the Kingdom. This was not only to honor Silpa Bhirasri, but also to inspire the younger generation of Thai artists. He also used the Bank of Thailand as a vehicle to patronize many local artists, setting an example for several private commercial banks to emulate.
Setting an example was a key aspect of Dr. Puey’s approach, using restraint and wherever possible, some humor to make his points. In A Siamese For All Seasons, Professor Laurence D. Stifel, a noted development economist whose publications are in the collection of the TU Libraries, recalled Dr. Puey’s wit:
Dr. Puey believed that he could be most effective if he avoided the political limelight and worked quietly within the system; he liked to say that a ‘Central Bank Governor should behave towards his Finance Minister as a dutiful wife should toward her husband. She can praise him both in public and in private, but any wifely criticism should be offered in private.’
Among his effective projects were an American-funded Mittraphap Highway – also called the Friendship Highway or Thai Highway 2 – in Nong Khai, northeastern Thailand, as well as new drainage and sewage systems for Bangkok. Such achievements improved the lives of millions of Thais. In 1965, the declaration of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, giving Dr. Puey its prize for government service, noted that the honoree persevered, meaning he never gave up:
Seventy percent of [Dr. Puey’s] efforts are spent combatting inefficiency and corruption, yet he never becomes disheartened.
The ability to be resilient and avoid discouragement is one of the great lessons of the work of Dr. Puey. Even his account, reprinted in A Siamese For All Seasons, of the tragic events of October 1976, ends with the note:
This account and assessment seems to be gloomy and depressing.
Where is the light to come from?
Always looking for the light was characteristic of Dr. Puey. Although he apparently never wrote about the British author Rudyard Kipling, Dr. Puey’s generation of students at English universities would have been thoroughly familiar with Kipling’s inspirational poem If:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating…
Whether consciously or not, Dr. Puey seemed to live his life according to these ideals. In 1942, as a member of the Free Siamese movement stationed in India under British supervision, Dr. Puey and other highly educated and skilled troops were assigned menial tasks. His response was to write a humorous poem recalling this time, included in his action-filled memoir of parachuting into Japanese-occupied Siam:
Rust on plates added flavour to the food we had to eat…
Corporal Mills, the engineer with a broom in his hand, orders us janitors
To scrub the floor, clean the latrines,
Wash the tables and carry out guard duties…
We go outside to dig up potatoes and complain and sing
While our supervisors, unaware, are happy with us.
Other ingredients of Dr. Puey’s accomplishment were patience and acceptance of human flaws. At a 1977 public meeting at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., when asked about democracy, Dr. Puey replied:
My own opinion is that democracy in my country has to be practiced, or in any country. It cannot be done like in a classroom… You have to practice in this imperfection all the time. And therefore, it takes time before you strike the right note.
Yet he could also be uncompromising in his ideals. In 1974, in a paper submitted to the Per Jacobsson Foundation Meeting in Tokyo, Dr. Puey paid homage to his recently deceased former assistant Khunying Suparb Yossundara (1920-1974) who later served as director of the Bank of Thailand and a Member of the Thai National Legislative Assembly:
You once criticized me for for concerning myself ‘too much’ with the questions of individual justice, social justice, and freedom. There is, you said, no perfect justice in this world. And my reply was that that was precisely why we must redouble our efforts to bring about at least the closest approximation to perfect justice.
Dr. Puey also had a strong sense of where his own talents were best used, as he stated in a 1974 interview with Khun Nai Teh Chongkadikij, editor of The Bangkok Post, reprinted in Best Wishes for Asia:
If my judgment is as good as they have attributed to me, I think I should say I am not fit to be prime minister…That is, I am not suitable as a future prime minister. My job is as a freelance and political animal supporting democratic rule and trying to promote and defend it. I hope there is no misunderstanding. This is not Siamese talk in which if you want to do something you must say no first. It does not fit my character.
Courage in illness
After Dr. Puey fled the Kingdom under threat of being lynched, and made a tiring series of speeches and appearances at international meetings, in September 1977 he suffered a stroke. This illness affected his speech and movement for the remainder of his life. In March 1976 The Bangkok Post described him as seemingly a frail old man. In the same series of articles on the occasion of his 60th birthday, Dr. Puey noted that his parents and two brothers had died before that age. Although ailing in later years, Dr. Puey received visitors such as Khunying Supatra Masdit and Khun Surin Pitsuwan, who wrote in The Nation in 1981 about a visit where Dr. Puey insisted that Khun Supatra keep her shoes on while visiting his home in an English village, since the floor was cold. His illness did not prevent him from making four trips back to Thailand to see friends and family, in 1987, 1993, 1995, and 1997, the last time only two years before his death.
UNESCO declared on the occasion of Dr. Puey’s centenary:
His capacity to strike a compromise between what was objectively possible and morally desirable was an extraordinary accomplishment. It had a particular impact on younger people…
With typical modesty, Dr. Puey disclaimed any such influence, in his March 1976articles in The Bangkok Post:
I am tired of hearing that Dr. Puey is leading students astray or students are leading Dr. Puey astray. Those with children of 17 to 18 or 20 years of age should know that today’s youth, particularly the students, more particularly Thammasat students, can think for themselves. There is no need for anyone to lead them.
(All images courtesy of Thailand Post and www.puey-ungphakorn.org)