It's time to root out endemic graft
Published: May 16, 2018 at 04:10 AM
Writer: Peerasit Kamnuansilpa and Sirisak Laochankham
Newspaper section: NEWS
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1466242/its-time-to-root-out-endemic-graft
For 85 years, Thailand has been trapped in a quagmire of political crises. It all began in 1933, when there were two coups in as many months.
Since then, there have been cycles of coups, new constitutions and general elections, with the first poll held on Nov 15, 1933 and the most recent on July 3, 2011.
Since 1933, there have been 26 general elections and 13 successful coups. Regrettably, Thailand has had an average of one newly penned constitution every four years.
As of now, the total count stands at 21, including the one that was passed by a referendum on Aug 7, 2016. The standard justification for a coup and new constitution is the need to oust a corrupt administration.
Thailand's road to democracy is incredibly bumpy and the political landscape has undermined its socio-economic development.
Thai politics has been marred by incidents of the military fighting against and overthrowing popularly elected governments that were, themselves, tainted with allegations of corruption, cronyism, nepotism and being ineffective.
This comes in stark contrast to the politics of a well-functioning democracy in socially and economically more mature countries, where their political activities are more concerned with enabling the connections between political and socio-economic development to proceed effectively through an administrative system that respects the voices, values and, presumably, the needs of the people.
Unlike in Singapore and South Korea, Thai politics is not about the country forging ahead, but more about protecting the interests of the most powerful groups and the allocation of wealth or benefits to their political clans.
Within this system, it is common to see the bureaucrats accountable for and responsive to the interests of politicians. Whether they acquire legitimacy to rule by popular election or by seizing power by military intervention makes no difference.
The rules of the game require bureaucrats to serve the ruling power groups or be removed. While they can always be replaced, the bureaucracy itself, as an effective political engine, still operates inside the labyrinth of the polity.
Almost four years after the latest coup, and after several false assurances, there are finally positive signs that an election will be held early next year.
This, however, should not be construed as the onset of a new chapter of democracy in Thailand. It only signifies that Thailand is still locked into the same cycle.
After enduring the latest crisis for nearly four years, we may have an opportunity to escape from this political predicament. But the country can capitalise on this if the next prime minister enters office with a determination to straighten out the political and bureaucratic mazes.
Indeed, we need a leader whose burning ambition is to rid our country of corruption. The overwhelming majority of Thais, who would readily uphold such values as honesty and integrity if they knew their peers were being held to the same standard, would certainly back a leader who championed this.
At the moment, the silent majority of Thais live frugally and are disgusted by the venality, greed and immorality exposed regarding some of the politicians and bureaucrats who, in contrast, live an extravagant life.
A glaring example is the bureaucrat who kept nearly 1 billion baht in his house -- and was only exposed when he was robbed by a burglar.
As with most countries, ascending to political power in Thailand requires large sums of money to get elected, which triggers a cycle of corruption.
Indeed, the bane of our democracy is the high cost of elections on the part of candidates, estimated at more than 50 billion baht during the last national election.
After the election, the winners who form a coalition government must recover their costs and even accumulate funds for the next election. Some recover their costs by way of corruption.
At the same time, they look the other way while petty bureaucrats accumulate wealth by resorting to bribes in exchange for expediting public services, or, in some cases, smuggling prohibited goods.
They can also earn money through delaying payments for government procurement and requiring kickbacks to complete the processing. All of this results in high costs, which lowers the economic competitiveness of the country.
It was once thought that e-auctions would make procurement more transparent and make collusion in bidding more difficult.
Unfortunately, this has proven a myth, as the differences in the offerings between the winners and losers are often infinitesimally small. This practice is rampant largely because the procurement officers, or in some cases the heads of public offices, reveal the reference prices to the strongest contenders in the race.
That makes it mathematically possible to split a small share of the windfall profits with the bidders who are content with not submitting a competitive bid. This dishonourable practice could never have been ""normalised"" if our national leaders wanted to clean up the administration.
However, there are signs that we have made improvements.
In the past, we were generally unable to uncover cases of fraud in the bureaucratic ranks. But recently the public has exposed the embezzlement of temple funds, scholarship funds for poor students or the Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund, funds for the destitute, and misdeeds in the procurement of a substandard quality of rabies vaccine within the Livestock Department.
While this is just the tip of the iceberg, the prime minister should not let this opportunity to clean up government offices pass him or us by.
As the world is digitalising at a rapid rate, Thailand's next prime minister should lead the country with a clear mandate to keep the government clean, or they will miss an opportunity to become a national hero.
This could include using blockchain technology, which is designed to be an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can record all government procurement and many other financial matters.
Therefore, the advice to both the current and next prime minister is that they have to lead the way by making the available digital technology standard practice.
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