The decision of the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) earlier this week to endorse the Royal Thai Navy's controversial submarine procurement project came as a major disappointment.
In doing so, the office has put its own reputation and dignity at risk, and risks losing the trust of the public.
Though the deal has drawn public suspicion, Auditor-General Pisit Leelavachiropas praised the navy, saying it "handled the project meticulously". He regards the deal, which is to commit the country to a 36-billion-baht procurement for three submarines from China over the course of 11 years, as "clear and above-board".
But in the eyes of the public, the OAG has now descended into becoming a mere rubber stamp for the military regime.
The OAG's decision was opposite to the view of the public which regards the purchase as a heavy burden on the national budget given the fact that Thailand does not really face any maritime threats or disputes that would require the use of submarines.
Many still remember how the eight-billion-baht HTMS Chakri Naruebet aircraft carrier has been underused and largely ends up as a Children Day's destination to give a bit of fun to the kids on their special day. It seems likely the submarines will end up the same way, with the only difference being that they cost a lot more.
If the OAG had behaved rationally, it would have made a different decision. It was a waste of time to examine other documents without checking the reasons behind the purchase. The OAG failed to check why the cabinet approved the deal in secret shortly after the Songkran holidays. That challenges the claim that the deal was transparent.
In fact, the auditing process was questionable right from the beginning. This is because the OAG started examining the deal only one day before it was to be signed by the navy and the Chinese on May 5. Even the OAG conceded that its findings would come out after the deal became a fait accompli.
At that stage, the navy team, led by navy chief-of-staff Adm Luecha Ruddit, pushed for the purchase of a 13.5-billion baht Yuan-class S26T submarine, with the first 700-million-baht instalment being paid this year. It will be followed by a two-billion-baht payment next year and the rest in 2023.
As the country is run by the military regime without any operational checks-and-balances mechanism, the OAG is one of the few agencies the public has any faith in -- hoping that it could eventually make the government and the navy backtrack from the plan, and avoid the Chakri Naruebet scenario which would save taxpayers' money for other more useful projects. But the agency has let them down.
Mr Pisit even said the project had been rejected by several cabinets since 1994. But what one minister predicted with confidence in the first few months after the junta took power that the purchase of submarines would succeed only with a military regime in place has come true. That's unfortunate.
The claim of Adm Luechai that a future government may drop the purchase deal is ridiculous.
Worse, the submarine saga just shows that the military regime and the navy have paid lip service when pledging to follow the late King Bhumibol's sufficiency economy theory. It's well known that the late King cautioned against buying the submarines during his birthday speech in 2007, a time when the country was run by a coup-installed administration. He made it clear he did not think the submarines would be useful given the maritime conditions around the country.
It's a real shame that those involved in this deal ignored royal wisdom.