TAO mergers a step back

TAO mergers a step back

The latest effort by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and its appointed bodies to merge "small" elected tambon administration organisations (TAOs) will be a step backwards for Thailand's devolution process, with severe political, social and economic ramifications.

It demonstrates the current regime's hidden agenda to lessen the political and social roles of these elected local administrators and pave the way for the central administration to regain greater control over the sovereign power of local people and their representatives.

The cabinet, the National Legislative Assembly and the National Reform Steering Assembly last month agreed in principle to endorse a bill governing local administration organisations. The bill, now pending the final approval process by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha, will result in the nationwide dissolution of every TAO which represents less than 7,000 people and generates an annual revenue of less than 20 million baht starting March 2018 when a fresh round of local elections are due.

The dissolved TAOs will be merged with the nearest larger TAO whose status will be changed to tambon municipality. That will bring about a large scale merging of 5,334 TAOs. In the worst case, certain districts will have merely one or two tambon municipalities.

Fewer in number, the central government will find it easier to manipulate their decisions and actions. Even without dissolution and merging, the Ministry of Interior and its provincial governors already have some power to line-manage TAOs.

Earlier, the NCPO in July 2014 already suspended the election of local administrators. The latest bill shows the regime's step-by-step approach to gradually strip away the right of local people to have a greater say in the development and administration of their localities. This means those who make key decisions to address their plights and problems will be based in Bangkok and a distant municipal office.

It will also increase the chances of local politicians with a larger base of influence to take control of new local administration bodies.

Ineffectiveness, overlapping responsibilities with delegated offices of ministries, and failure to generate sufficient local revenue are likely to be cited as key reasons for this reform. The regime should fix these perceived "constraints" by amending laws and enhancing TAO capabilities, while letting local democratic governance develop and mature.

It may be true that many TAOs have underperformed and been plagued by corruption scandals. But these same problems exist in central administration offices. Many of them, however, are capable and accountable to their constituencies because they understand the needs of local people.

Since the formalisation of the devolution process in 1999, TAOs have run on an insufficient budget annually allocated by the central government. The budget usually comes with pre-conditions on how it should be used, mostly to serve government policies. The rest goes on staff salaries and office maintenance.

The decentralisation process aims to channel at least 35% of the national budget to all 7,853 local administrative bodies. Currently, only 28.1% or 656 billion baht, is allocated.

Without total independence over budget planning, TAOs find it hard to fulfil responsibilities and achieve development and investment targets.

Thailand's road to devolution has still a long way to go. Rather than disbanding TAOs and giving birth to more centralised tambon municipalities, the NCPO should offer concrete and structural solutions to fix the constraints faced by these local administrators.

Much still needs to be done to fix the overlapping roles and responsibilities between delegated offices of the central bureaucracy and elected local offices, among other things.

Going back to a centralised democracy with governing power concentrated in Bangkok must not be a choice. It will weaken people's participation in functional democracy.

Editorial

Bangkok Post editorial column

These editorials represent Bangkok Post thoughts about current issues and situations.

Email : anchaleek@bangkokpost.co.th

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