The 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference was held in Bangkok last week. I attended a good part of it. Mr. Voranai Vanijaka of the Bangkok Post had a good article about the conference, which can be found here (http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/206286/an-existential-horror). He and others observed that “[t]he most popular, and most baffling, statistic last week was the 76.1% of Thais who believe that corruption is OK, as long as the country prospers.” Agree. And:
To address this disconcerting find, the prime minister’s spokesperson, Thepthai Senpong, announced that the government will ask the Ministry of Culture to combat such attitudes head-on by building a new culture, creating a new consciousness for the Thai people, one that would not condone corruption
Good sentiment, but “creating a new consciousness” is quite an undertaking, and I have a few other suggestions involving legal reform. Thai laws are often written in broad terms and grant broad discretion to officials to approve or disapprove registrations and applications. Often little or no guidance is provided on how such discretion is supposed to be exercised. I hoped to demonstrate this while looking at some Thai laws in my blogs (always better to show than tell), but this came up just after I started this blog, so please excuse me for jumping ahead a bit.
Thai laws and regulations are also often so over-the-top that they simply invite selective enforcement. Look at Thailand’s anti-alcohol legislation (discussed in my last post). While the best of intentions may lie behind this (and, to be quite frank, some of it may just be local businesses wanting to protect their turf from foreign competition), this sort of regulation is just too over-reaching to be practical.
It simply invites rent seeking behavior: “Mr. Official, you have undefined discretion to grant or not grant approval on a matter where you don’t really believe the regulation serves any useful purpose, perhaps I can help show you how you should exercise that discretion…”
I plan to return to the FBA in the next few days and, in the context of discussing that law, I hope to illustrate a few other uh, interesting, aspects of Thai law. Stay tuned.
Thai Law & Policy 