Radical change is needed to unlock country’s potential 

He said he did not understand why the village headman, district head and the governor of Kalasin province failed to help the victim for such a long time. 
The story began in late April when a Siamese Rosewood fell on the house of a villager. The house owner did not dare remove the tree from his house because it might violate a conservation law protecting the endangered tree species.
So the family moved to stay at a relative’s house and asked the relevant authorities to remove the tree from their house roof. However, no action was taken until late June – only after local media had picked up on the unusual story.
Prayut raised this issue at the conference because he apparently wanted to stress the point that all people – especially those who have authority – have to closely co-operate to allow the country to become more prosperous over the next 20 years.
The 12th plan, which is part of the government’s 20-year strategy, has 10 pillars which the National Economic and Social Development Board believe can help the economy grow by 5 per cent annually and narrow the income inequality gap. Many people have questioned such an ambitious goal.
One of key strategies is to develop regional economies by creating provincial groups to which the government will allocate financial resources and other supporting measures in order to promote specific industries, services and agriculture in those cluster areas.
For example, the development of a group of provinces close to Nakhon Ratchasima, and in the southern part of the North East, would focus on tourism, renewable energy and agribusiness. 
The largest part of the budget would still channel from government agencies in the provinces, with smaller amounts of funding sent directly to villagers and local governments to co-ordinate the task. 
At best, the outcome is expected to be an incremental improvement as usual. It will fall short of advancing the country due to constraints on those institutions under close control of the central government.
It has long been said that the central government is too big to resolve local issues in a timely fashion, because of red tape. Meanwhile, local governments – the so-called tambon administrative organisations – are too small to address issues due to their limited financial resources and manpower.
Current reforms under the junta government have not yet demonstrated how substantial reform should be achieved in terms of power decentralisation.
At the same time, the fight for decentralisation has weakened compared with a political movement during the Prem Tinsulanonda administration (1980-88), when academics and students started to call for elected governors in all provinces or at least in key areas. 
Among the original members of Asean, Thailand has a weak local government system. This is especially the case compared with Malaysia, where its past colonial ruler Britain laid the foundations of the political system. Malaysia now has done better than Thailand in both economic and democratic development. 
Therefore, against of backdrop of the current centralised political system, Thailand is unlikely to efficiently spread economic development at the provincial level across the country. 
The peculiar story of the tree that fell on the house has demonstrated that Thailand is stuck. It cannot move forward since it is trapped in a web of obsolete laws and outdated institutions. In plain language, our obsolete system makes us look stupid. We need a radical change in our system in order to unlock the potential of the country and its people.