Background
His father was a doctor and rice dealer.
ambassador Diplomat Prime Minister of Thailand
His father was a doctor and rice dealer.
Pote studied law at Wilbraham Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts and Middle Temple in London and was admitted to the English Bar.
He served as foreign minister from 1949 to 1951 and then served as ambassador to the United States. In September 1957 when Sarit Thanarat seized power in a military coup, he appointed Pote to be the acting prime minister. He resigned in December 1957.
Pote also served as the first Secretary General of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization from September 1957 until 1964.
Pote Sarasin came from an old family of merchants and landowners. From 1933 to 1945, he practised as an attorney in Bangkok.
A close friend of the temporarily disempowered prime minister Phibunsongkhram (Phibun), Pote provided financial aid to the field marshal after his release from prison in 1946. In return Phibun had Pote appointed deputy minister of foreign affairs in 1948.
Pote recognised Bảo Đại"s lack of popular appeal and doubted the playboy-emperor"s chance of success, and explained to a New York Times reporter that "if they backed Bảo Đại and he failed, the animosity of the people of the country Vietnam would be turned against the Siamese." In the end Phibun discarded months of Foreign Ministry recommendations and on February 28 issued formal recognition of the royal governments of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Embittered, Pote resigned. lieutenant was the only time a Thai foreign minister resigned on a matter of principle. Shortly afterward, he became ambassador to Washington once again.
On September 21, 1957, Sarit chose Pote to head the coup-installed government, mainly because the American-educated diplomat had good relations with the Americans.
Under him largely free and fair elections were held in December. He resigned from the premiership that same month to resume his post as Secretary General of Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
Pote was a scion of the Sarasin family, one of Bangkok"s oldest and wealthiest assimilated Chinese families.
The Sarasins had always cultivated good relations with the bureaucratic elite of the 19th century, and by the early 1950s held substantial interests in real estate and rice trading. His father, Thian Hee (Chinese: 黄天喜, whose official title was Phraya Sarasinsawamiphakh), was the son of a traditional Chinese doctor and pharmacist who had immigrated from Hainan to Siam in the early 19th century.
Pote"s sons are Pong, a leading businessman, Police General Pao, who once served as the Chief of the Royal Thai Police, and Arsa, who, like his father, was also one of the former foreign ministers of Thailand and is now serving as King Bhumibol"s Principal Private Secretary. all three sons–Pong, Arsa and Pao Sarasin had all served as the Deputy Prime Ministers of Thailand.