Honorable Comrade

For 14 years Norodom Sihanouk was King of Cambodia and a frolicsome young monarch was he. He played the sax and composed jazz, kept a stable of race horses and a troupe of dancing girls, produced and acted in his own movies, collected concubines and fast cars. But at the age of 29, Sihanouk discovered the great game of politics.

Last year Sihanouk abdicated the throne, became his own Premier and promulgated a brave pro-Western anti-Communist policy. But after a Tammany-style general election (which he won 100%), Sihanouk found the responsibilities of the premiership niggling, and appointed himself a kind of freewheeling plenipotentiary of foreign affairs.

Uncle Nehru. Watching from afar, India's Prime Minister Nehru praised Sihanouk ("a young man with a wise head") and became his long-distance adviser and mentor. Last month, after a state visit to the Philippines, young Sihanouk began expressing views like those of Nehru. Angry at some heavy-handed "advising"' he had been subjected to in Manila, he charged the Philippines with participating in a U.S. plot to ensnare him into the SEATO pact (see above) and protested bitterly that while the U.S. had given the Philippines heavy farm machinery and hospitals, all Cambodia had got was "fancy automobiles and refrigerators."*

Prompted by Nehru, Sihanouk next visited Red China's Premier Chou En-lai in Peking. Up to that moment Cambodia (the most serene of the three states that once made up French Indo-China) had been one of the few remaining countries in Southeast Asia where overseas Chinese, controlling most of the country's transport, banking and merchandising, appeared to retain a basic sympathy with Nationalist China. Said Sihanouk, stepping out of the plane on his return from Peking three weeks ago: "There are two Chinas, but the only China to which Cambodians go is Communist China." Almost within the hour photographs of Sihanouk with Mao and Chou (or just Mao and Chou alone) were being displayed on street stalls through the capital.

In Peking Sihanouk had seen high government leaders riding bicycles. Forthwith he ordered his own ministers to supply their own transportation and decided that they must work with their hands once every month in a village, "to get closer to the little people." He issued a general communique: "Don't bow any more or kneel in the dust when you meet me . . . Don't call me Highness or Prince, call me Honorable Comrade." Sihanouk called his new policy the Pancha Shila, or the five principles of purification. He borrowed the words from Nehru, but Sihanouk's five principles are: no official cars, no government housing, no titles, no fancy uniforms, no sojourning at les lieux de plaisirs (entertainment places).

Shifting Crown. The new Sihanouk role was that of kingmaker. In a ceremony of dazzling Oriental splendor last week he crowned his own father King of Cambodia. Long Sihanouk's close adviser, elderly (60), diabetic Suramarit and his statuesque wife Kossaman are members of the Khmer dynasty which goes back before recorded history, but neither was in the direct line of royal descent in 1941 when the French bent the legitimacy to make young Sihanouk King. Sihanouk, who deeply respects his parents, saw that the coronation got the full Oriental treatment, with dragon dancers, marching mandarins, hundreds of warriors and bureaucrats in fancy uniforms and a dozen official elephants.

Sihanouk himself performed the ceremony, placing the golden crown on his father's head, while 62 Buddhist monks in bright saffron robes chanted ancient prayers, and a high priest placed a fig leaf behind Suramarit's ear, symbol of long life and wisdom. A few minutes earlier Sihanouk had himself made Premier again, and delivered a little speech accusing the U.S. of wishing to take over and enlarge the Cambodian army. Said a Frenchman, amused by the U.S. predicament, "When he was King, we used to say le Roi est fou [the King is mad]." Last week the ex-King announced that his next ambition is to represent Cambodia at the United Nations in New York.

* Cambodia has been getting approximately $50 million a year in U.S. aid, including roads, port facilities, irrigation projects, medical assistance and the entire upkeep of the Cambodian army. At Sihanouk's own request, some 5% of U.S. aid has been spent on other imports, including Cabinet ministers' Chevrolets.

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