Thailand pays lip service to corruption

problems with new museum

Image via the Museum of Thai Corruption.

By Thitipol Panyalimpanun-Sep 17, 2015

On September 6, Thailand celebrated the National Anti-Corruption Day for the fifth
time as the country proceeds with its national agenda against corruption, having two
months ago passed a new anti-graft law, under which the maximum penalty is capital
punishment.General Prayuth Chan-ocha presided the opening of the brand new, first
of its kind Museum of Thai Corruption earlier this month. The public responded with
excitement but they dont really need the museum.
The Museum of Thai Corruption, founded by the non-profit Anti-Corruption
Organization of Thailand (ACT), is now operating as a roving museum and will later
settle at the National Anti-Corruption Commission of Thailand (NACC). At the
moment (Sept. 15-28), it occupies the ground floor at the Bangkok Art and Culture
Centre to showcase its collection of 10 sculptural works that represent 10 scandalous
corruption cases. These crude sculptures with distorted faces were intended to
represent the corrupt nature of the wrongdoers. According to the masterminds behind

the museum, these infamous cases, from the rice-pledge scheme to the infamous film
festival scandal, cost the country over $16 billion. While the law doesnt allow the
museum to directly name the involved individuals, the museum launched an eloquent
YouTube video that encourages people to public-shame the wrongdoers.

Object 1

In an interview with BK Magazine, Mana Nimitmongkol, the ACTs secretary,

suggested society should be reminded of the corrupt.
People always say that Thais like to let things go by easily, which serves to make the
corrupt even more conceited. For this reason, we want to promote the exhibition as a
monument to the dirty trickery of corruption, while roundly condemning those guilty
parties, he said.
Despite its pronounced good intent, the museums downright authoritative voice cast
doubts over its role and neutrality. While most contemporary museums strive for facts
and neutrality, the untypical Museum of Thai Corruption seems to incite change and
raise awareness through angst and frustration. There are, unfortunately, many
corruption scandals out there. The NACC alone has been receiving over 1,100
corruption case complaints annually in the past five years, and now handles over
7,000 cases. Choosing 10 from the bunch inevitably invited criticism, in museum
ethics and its political stance, when most of the cases took place under the Yingluck
Shinawatra government.

But besides the questionable role of the museum, we should also ask if it can make
any difference? The problem with Thai corruption is not the lack of awareness; Thais
are well aware of the existing corruption problem in the country. According to a survey
by Maejo University earlier this year, 49.48 percent of the 1,155 respondents are very
worried about corruption problems while another 30.26 percent are worried but believe
it will soon be resolved.

Object 2

The real worry is not that people will forget about these cases, but why the legal action
has yet to bring the culprits to justice, and why it takes so long to detect and prosecute
these cases. The infamous Klong Darn water treatment scheme fraud, for example,
started back in 1995 and took two years before locals found out about the project.
After many protests, they had to wait until 2003 for the project to be suspended and
investigated. In 2008, the court eventually arrived at a verdict just enough time for
one of the culprits to escape and live abroad. To no surprise, an ABAC poll in 2013
found that 93 percent of 1,561 respondents agree that anti-corruption organizations
should also be investigated.
If we are to take a less emotional approach to anti-corruption measures, there is a
simple formula proposed by Robert Klitgaard, an expert in economic strategy and
institutional reform, which formulates that: Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion
Accountability. In another study titled The Impact of Democracy and Press Freedom
on Corruption, Christine Kalenborn and Christian Lessmann studied such
conditionality from 170 countries and found that democratic elections only work in

controlling corruption, if there is a certain degree of press freedom in a country.

Clearly, there is room for improvement for Thailand.
Even as the new museum highlights its chosen corruption cases, officials are
intimidating villagers protesting against coal mining, journalists and politicians are
being detained for criticizing the regime, and the defamation law and computer crime
act is putting even more restraints on media freedom. Despite declaring war on
corruption, cracking down on mischievous taxis, and limiting retail lottery prices, the
junta shows no effort to make things transparent. While promising to deliver
democracy and a corruption-free society, the generals are slow to declare their own
assets. And there is no law that requires them to do so, the NACC said.
Fighting corruption is difficult because the corrupt are often the powerful. Public anger
wont end corruption. As optimistic and naive as it sounds, we still need laws and
policies that demand public interest disclosure, accountability, and better witness
protection.
On anti-corruption day, General Prayuth also gave a talk to students about citizen
duties against corruption. When he afterwards asked if anyone had any questions, a
high-school student stood up with a banner questioning the newly implemented
citizen duty curriculum. The boy was taken to a police station. Perhaps it is too
ambitious to ask for a corruption-free country, when the right to speak is still
unattainable? Or perhaps there is a more fitting solution given the current political
climate: there will absolutely be zero corruption, when nobody can say so.
___________
About the author:
Thitipol Panyalimpanun is a Thai writer from Bangkok who writes mainly about art,
films and culture. He is now based in New York City, where he pursues a masters
degree in publishing at New York University. You can follow him on Twitter @ThitipolP.
Posted by Thavam