Thailand has already made substantial progress towards decentralisation in theory, with the 1997 constitution, which led to the first provincial assemblies.
A village head waves a national flag at a rally to protest against the government’s move in 2012 to limit the tenure of village heads and kamnans to only five years in the current system that makes them accountable to the Interior Ministry in Bangkok, not their immediate communities. THITI WANNAMONTHA
The 1999 Decentralisation Act opened the way for partially decentralised municipalities, and the 1999 Education Act (and related 2002 amendment) called for a curriculum which values local dialects, culture, and wisdom and the local management of schools. The last four National Economic and Social Development Plans (1997-2016), all have emphasised plurality as well as national unity.
In the current political situation, another step towards significant democratic decentralisation is being suggested: the election of provincial governors. In essence, this has already taken place at a pilot stage, in the case of the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority.
However, the existing partial decentralisation with elected mayors and municipal councils as well as elections of subdistrict (tambon) councils has revealed one basic flaw with this kind of system: Genuine fiscal decentralisation has not accompanied such a process.
This means that municipalities still receive the bulk of their funding from central government grants as levied and redistributed from the VAT or income taxes. The Decentralisation Act mandated that by 2006 local revenues should be 35% of total national revenue. That goal has not been achieved.
Much of this money allocated to local areas is for "special projects" that must have central government approval. Because local elected councils are restricted in this way, there is pressure on mayors and tambon councils from local citizens when they are unable to deliver on popular projects, and proper accountability cannot be achieved. This means that one excuse for corruption can be that the allocation of spending is not controlled by the municipality or local tambon, and so the central government may be blamed. This does nothing for encouraging democratic decentralisation.
What, then, is the answer? How can Thailand decentralise further while also achieving the aims of reduced corruption and improved accountability? One option would be to devolve democracy and greater budget authority to the regional level, meaning the northern, the northeastern, the central, and the southern regions. How can this devolution be achieved?
One potential model is the National Assembly for Wales in Great Britain. The roots of this assembly go back to 1949, when the British Empire was contemplating the process of decolonisation and appointed a Council for Wales and Monmouthshire. Put to a referendum in 1979, a more powerful body, a Welsh Assembly, was rejected by voters.
In a second referendum, in 1997, the measure passed, and in 1998 the Government of Wales Act was passed, resulting in the Welsh Assembly. A further Government of Wales Act 2006 created a government for Wales under the assembly structure, giving it for the first time, in 2007, substantial legislative powers. Following a third referendum, in 2011, the Welsh Assembly was granted direct legislative powers without having to go through the British parliament in London. Recent developments, in 2013, saw the Welsh Assembly achieve some fiscal borrowing powers as well as control of landfill taxes and stamp duties. It is anticipated there will be another referendum, this time on the devolution of income tax, in 2014.
How could this model be applied to a region of Thailand, for example, Northeast Thailand? Obviously, a Northeast Thailand Regional Assembly would be rather diverse, with around 14 ethnic groups in the area and about 19 million citizens. Mixed member proportional representation could be used, with both party list and constituency members of parliament, as with the current Thai national model.
What kind of areas could be devolved to such an assembly? In the Welsh example, the list is long and, in fact, covers 20 areas: agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development; ancient monuments and historic buildings; culture; economic development; education and training; the environment; fire and rescue services; food; health and health services; highways and transport; housing; local government; public administration; social welfare; sport and recreation; tourism; town and country planning; water and flood defence; and finally, and importantly, the Welsh language.
It took decades to get to this stage, and there are still substantial arguments over the system of checks and balances exercised by the British parliament over the Welsh Assembly. However, in the 20 areas listed above, the regional assembly has fully devolved powers of legislation. However, because Wales was integrated into Great Britain several hundred years ago (in 1536), legislation covering Wales is very similar to that for England, except in some health and education areas, and from 2012, in some local bylaws.
We can expect that a Northeast Thailand Regional Assembly would, initially, also closely resemble the Thai parliament until granted the ability to create its own primary legislation in areas such as those covered by the Welsh Assembly. This could take, admittedly, decades, with perhaps successive combinations of acts of parliament and referendums every two to three years. Such a process could eventually put into place in Thailand's various regions a structure similar to the Welsh Assembly.
What of the threat of separatism? As mentioned above, Northeast Thailand, the focus of this idea, is not a homogenous ethnolinguistic region. There is very little for it to coalesce around if it did try to develop independence as some kind of "nation", an unthinkable and totally unacceptable option. While there are more than 11 million Lao-Thai, there are about a million Thai-Khmers, significant numbers of Korat speakers, many Sino-Thais, Vietnamese-Thai, Phu Tai, and significant numbers of smaller ethnolinguistic communities.
Thus, there is no ethnic rationale for separatism. Nor is there the economic capability to separate, which is why the Welsh Assembly is an assembly and not an independent parliament. Basically, Northeast Thailand requires access to the sea in order to survive, and this is necessarily through Bangkok and other major ports such as Laem Chabang.
There is one final issue, however, that must be carefully considered. If administrative power is slowly devolved to local regions and their administrators/legislators, there has to be some give and take over the extent to which these regional legislators are able to influence national legislation in Bangkok. In other words, true decentralisation means those benefactors of decentralisation must lose, to an ever increasing degree, the ability to influence other regions, while still obviously playing some role in national-level issues such as immigration policy (important in the North, for example).
The kind of deeper decentralisation suggested here could lead Thailand to a brighter, more democratic future with local needs served more creatively, accountably and responsibly. It might also help defuse political tensions between Bangkok and the South and the North and Northeast. But is it a step Thai society is ready to take?
Peerasit Kamnuansilpa, PhD, is associate professor and former dean and founder of the College of Local Administration at Khon Kaen University. Gerald W Fry, is distinguished international professor, the Department of Organisational Leadership and Development, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota.