It is certainly right to be concerned about how it is getting increasingly difficult for Thais to own a piece of land. But it is completely wrong to blame foreigners for Thailand's inequitable land ownership problem and land grabbing.
Ombudsman Siracha Charoenpanij made headlines on Tuesday when he claimed that a third of land in Thailand, or about 100 million rai, is now in foreigners' hands due to proxy ownership made possible by legal loopholes and corruption.
The figures, he said, come from a National Institute of Development Administration study which specifies that wealthy foreigners are using marriages to Thai women or nominees to buy prized properties, particularly in well-known beach resort towns.
This is a classic case of xenophobia based on false statistics. Let's do some simple maths.
Thailand covers about about 514,000 square kilometres, or 320 million rai. Of this, 120 million rai is private land, 55 million settlement land, 30 million government land and 115 million rai earmarked as forest land.
Where on earth can the 100 million rai owned by foreigners come from? Private land? How much can rich foreigners buy when most private land is already owned by a handful of big landlords.
Of course, there is 55 million rai of settlement land that can be snapped up. But most is in rural areas with little infrastructure support. Is this the kind of land foreigners are looking for? If the 100 million rai under foreign ownership figure is correct, is the study suggesting their properties are in forests or on government land?
If the Ombudsman had focused on the problem of nominee land ownership in resort towns only, his concerns would have been legitimate because the crux of the problem is corruption. But the Ombudsman's cautionary words ended up carrying no weight as he pointed fingers in the wrong direction about land grabbing, complete with unbelievable statistics.
If the Office of the Ombudsman really wants to solve the problem of landlessness, it should pay attention to another set of statistics.
Start with the fact that 90% of land owners have one rai or less while the remaining 10% of private land is owned by landlords. Seventy percent of this land is speculative, lying idle and unproductive when 4.8 million farmers are struggling with landlessness and not having enough land to till.
More farmers are also losing their land every day as farming is a loss-making business with rising investment costs and depressed farm prices. This is why the number of tenants has risen to nearly 60% of all farmers, according to the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry. Since land rents can be as high as a third of total investment costs, solving the land ownership problem is thus crucial to solving farmers' perennial indebtedness.
Land reform is the way to go. A progressive land tax, a land ownership ceiling, the setting up of a land bank to help the landless, community land ownership, a transparent and online land ownership data system _ all these ideas have been repeatedly discussed. But they remain just that, ideas, because the rich and powerful do not want to see changes.
Without land reform, however, the disparity which is the root cause of the political divide and violence will always be ready to explode.
If the Ombudsman wants to be credible, deal with a progressive tax. Deal with landlords. Deal with corrupt officials. Stop making foreigners the scapegoats of Thailand's shamefully unequal land ownership system.