Punish PAOs, not the public

Punish PAOs, not the public

It's unfortunate that the effectiveness of a local administration has inevitably been called into question following an allegation that some of its officials spent public money on extravagant personal benefits.

This should not be the case. Misuse of public money or acts of corruption by local administration bodies, or any state units at all, must be strictly probed and prevented but the principle of decentralisation should not be collateral damage.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister's Office permanent secretary Panadda Diskul alleged in a posting on his Facebook page that he had learned of a Provincial Administration Organisation (PAO) chief who spent public money on a first-class plane ticket and 100,000 baht on a bottle of wine.

He said officials engaged in such lavish spending should resign as they are a disgrace to the country's bureaucracy. His criticism upset many members of the PAO, especially in the North and Northeast. Some of them took to wearing black to work in a protest against him.

In response, ML Panadda offered an apology. He said he did not mean to criticise the entire community of PAO officials, only those who have misspent public funds. The top official's conciliatory gesture seems to have quelled the situation. However, the short-lived episode of hostility has generated some new problems.

The first one is about the allegation itself.

During a meeting to clear the air with a group of PAO officials early this week, ML Panadda refused to name the PAO chief he accused of lavish spending.

There can be no reason for the cover-up.

If ML Panadda has information about the alleged misuse of taxpayers' money, a clue that is supposedly solid enough to prompt him to publicise the practice, he should have it pursued rigorously.

Failure to do so would simply make him complicit in the problem that he is condemning.

The second issue is about the PAOs. Instead of wearing black and making a protest gesture, the organisations could tackle the criticism more responsibly by making transparency their standard practice. The organisations should keep the public informed about how they spend their budgets, on what activities and what those activities are supposed to achieve.

The worst problem that ML Panadda's claim could possibly engender, especially now that it is left unchecked and unanswered, is distrust in local administration elections and decentralisation as a whole.

At present, the National Council for Peace and Order has already suspended elections of local officials whose terms have expired. The seats are to be filled by bureaucrats through a selection process, according to the junta. There are concerns as well that the ongoing process of national reforms will lead to a return of centralisation as some reform proposals called for local administrators to be appointed instead of elected.

Admittedly, the process of decentralisation has not gone without problems during the past 15 years. There have been difficulties all along, regarding corruption, ineptness and monopoly of power, by local administrators once they attain power. While all these problems must be fixed, the decentralisation process itself should not be questioned, or reversed.

Respected social activist Prawase Wasi was spot-on when he said during a recent seminar that the heart of national reform is returning power to the people.

Centralisation has weakened local communities as they are not allowed to make decisions on their own. Appointed officials meanwhile tend not to understand local contexts and end up making bad decisions, according to Dr Prawase.

The country cannot revert to that problematic route. Decentralisation is the only way forward.

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