In an exclusive interview with the Integrity Way, a team of the Office of Thailand's National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) in recent days, Mrs. Juree Vichit-Vadakan, Chairperson of Transparency Thailand Foundation highlights that corruption problems have affected the development of each country in particularly on the economic sector. Obviously, it has been seen in the investment sector as investors will consider how easy or difficult it is to do business in that country based on a chance for corruption. Investors will consider whether they need to pay a bribe or not. If it is found that a country has complicated regulations and each agency can ask for bribes, it will become a hidden cost. Those are considered crucial reasons for whether or not they should invest in each country.
Chairperson of the Transparency Thailand Foundation elaborates that when focusing on the corruption situation in Thailand on prevention and suppression, there are more efforts to help lessen the problem. For example, during the past several years the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) demonstrated good performance in counter-corruption efforts. However, the general public may not be aware of the in-depth information. Yet, people who had followed the movements could acknowledge those attempts. In the case of the Comptroller General's Department conducting the Integrity Pact (IP) project and the Public Construction Transparency Project (CoST), both of these tools can prevent corruption and save the national budget by more than 100 billion baht. But we must admit that there are still some people who look for loopholes in the system to commit corruption. However, the right solution is efficient law enforcement.
Mrs. Juree added that if considering Thailand's anti-corruption mechanism, whether it is an organization or a law, Thailand has more than other countries. Therefore, the point is not to create more laws or regulations. Yet, the problems are the functioning of the bureaucracy, the efficiency of law enforcement, trial, and judgment of punishment, which need to be done at an appropriate time. Each corruption case should not be delayed in ruling; otherwise, people will totally ignore and forget. Moreover, there must be a law reformation of the Regulatory Guillotine in order to repeal or improve laws or regulations that are no longer necessary or inconsistent with the circumstances or that are an obstacle in contacting government agencies, while also Thailand should diminish the use of discretion by civil servants. All of these mentions require a reformation. Nevertheless, those problems have also been seen in many countries, not only in Thailand.
"If looking from the past until the present, people in this generation are more aware of corruption problems. People in the past may not understand clearly 'Conflict of Interest'. Nowadays, they are better understood about Conflict of Interest. People also talk about the transparency of projects in the area. For instance, the "Growing Good" project has made people more aware of anti-corruption. People are currently focusing more on creating awareness among children and youth," the chairperson of the Transparency Thailand Foundation explains.
She also says about Thailand's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) that for many years, the CPI index has been released and has embarrassed Thailand compared with other nations. Since the Transparency Thailand Foundation has worked with Transparency International (TI), the foundation has learned that there are many steps in conducting a Corruption Perception Index. One important step is the answer from a person that TI has assigned to be responsible for that country. Therefore, the answer may be inaccurate from reality for various reasons.
Those reasons are such limitations on inaccessibility of information, and failure to understand the context of Thai society and Thai politics. Westerners may think that rights and freedoms can only occur in an elected government. The military government must be corrupted. However, the surveyors were not aware that the Thai military government had initiated the Integrity Pact and Transparency Project in public sector construction, which helped save a high amount of the national budget. This performance may not be aware among foreigners, but most Thai people also do not acknowledge this effort. In addition, the Thai media does not pay much attention to positive stories or they may report about that news but people do not pay much attention, unlike bad or criminal news. The more scandalous the news is, the news reports will be presented for several days as people like that kind of news. Unfortunately, people do not like much about good news. Good news will appear only once time and then totally disappear.
"If I were a NACC officer, I would not pay too much attention to the CPI index. Thailand should not be concerned much about the score. However, Thai people seem to attach great importance to it, even though it has many limitations. The NACC, Thailand, and those involved in the government should focus on doing their work effectively and have the courage to announce on the global stage about their successful projects and implementation in counter corruption to create greater awareness among foreigners," she ends the interview with support to NACC, Thailand in fighting against corruption.
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*This exclusive interview translation is funded by the National Anti-Corruption Fund (NACF).
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National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), Thailand
The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) is a constitutional independent organization and supervised by nine commissioners selected from various professions. It is authorised to undertake work on the prevention and suppression of malfeasance, particularly in government agencies, on assets investigations, as well as on the monitoring of ethics and virtues of political position holders.
It has the authority to file charges in court as well as support and build up awareness of the penalties for committing corruption. The NACC is supervised by the NACC Board and has the Office of the NACC as its administrative agency.
Since 1997, Thai Courts have ruled against and punished politicians, former ministers, high-ranking government officials as well as executives of the private sector in the thousands of cases submitted by the NACC.
