The National Legislative Assembly's (NLA) Committee on Local Administration's proposal to scrap Provincial Administrative Organisations (PAOs) raises doubts about its practicality.
There is a consensus that Thailand's bureaucracy needs to be streamlined. However, more important are the power relationships between the ministries, the governors, and PAOs, and thus the levels of devolution and self-determination. The sensitivity of this issue can be seen in the recent convoluted politicking regarding the PAOs.
The PAO system was first introduced in 1955 by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to centralise power in the hands of the ministry itself. Though it was cast as a means of devolution, it actually created the machinery for overseeing local government, including strategic planning and budgetary mechanisms, under the control of MOI-appointed provincial governors. However, this created a dichotomy whereby the provincial governors embodied both devolution and centralisation, with the latter usually taking priority.
Problematically, the PAO system has always clashed with the 1933 Municipality Act, which has encouraged urbanisation and civic values. In addition, the 1994 Tambon Administrative Organisation (TAO) Act added a level of local administration at the sub-district and is seen as being more accountable to the people. Therefore, TAOs are better understood and more popular than PAOs.
Due to the lack of support for PAOs, there have been previous attempts to repeal the PAO Act. The first came in early 2001, when a number of intellectuals, including the Minister of the Interior, began to voice doubts concerning the functional value of PAOs. Concerns were raised that he was proposing to abolish PAOs. As PAOs constitute a strong power-base in themselves, employing thousands of people serving as gatekeepers and planners, as well as being a conduit for substantial budgets, the political temperature rose. Several members of parliament asked the government clarify its stance. The minister subsequently had to formally announce there was no policy to abolish the PAOs.
The question of the functionality of PAOs emerged again in 2013. The Minister of Natural Resources and Environment criticised the effectiveness of the PAO, as they do not have a real area of jurisdiction of their own. The areas which the PAOs serve overlap with other types of government at lower tiers.
The PAOs' budgets, he said, could be used more effectively and reach more people if they were allocated directly to the municipalities and the TAOs.
The result was a public outcry. He received heavy criticism from colleagues, the opposition parties, and the POA chiefs.
He was even accused of trying to seize power and give money back to the MOI which would thwart the progress of decentralised management as called for in the 1999 Decentralisation Act. The minister and Pheu Thai leaders swiftly adopted a position of denial.
To sum up, all previous attempts to abolish the PAOs have been unsuccessful. This is because people of widely differing political stances share a common interest in them.
MPs from all parties, the PAOs, CEOs, and provincial councilors from every province have always strongly opposed the idea of abolishing them.
The motivations of these interest groups are not typically explicit. However, one factor may be the PAOs' budgets.
Several PAOs have annual budgets of more than one billion baht each, with a few approaching two billion baht.
Thus, they function as direct and indirect conduits whereby government budgets can be funneled to different interest groups.
It is well known among those doing business with PAOs that one way to obtain a business contract from them is to "shake the money tree" — payoffs. To understand this system, one must realise the interior minister can issue both policy mandates and undocumented advice on those requests to the National Bureau of the Budget, which forwards these requests to parliament for scrutiny before passing the budget bill. This is when the money trees bloom.
Thailand does not need further concentration of power in an opaque bureaucracy but structural solutions to local administration which follow international trends in favour of increasing efficiency, transparency, and accountability through self-determination.
Rather than abolishing the PAOs and transferring their powers to the governors and bureaucrats at the MOI, it is worth considering experiments in devolution along with referendums on elected provincial governors.
Peerasit Kamnuansilpa, PhD, is founder and former dean of the College of Local Administration, Khon Kaen University.