Process of reforming agencies introduces hiccups
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SETTING UP new independent bodies is relatively easy compared with reforming the existing ones, but dissolving an existing body is much harder and raises issues that could affect the national-reform plans.
The Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) this week started drawing up the new charter article by article, including an unprecedented chapter on “national reform and promoting reconciliation”, which has never been dealt with in any of the previous Thai constitutions.
The process of drafting this chapter mainly involves scrutinising proposals forwarded by the National Reform Council (NRC), with reformers in many areas suggesting the setting up of various new committees for better national reforms.
For instance, in the area of education, reformers had proposed that the CDC set up a new body tasked with studying and scrutinising national education policies as well as for developing human resources for the educational sector.
The above tasks of this new body are described by reformers – according to its jurisdiction, authority and implementation – as similar to those of the Ministry of Education. So the next question is why there should be a new agency to work independently from the main agency but do almost the same job.
In the area of the environment and national resources, a new body may be created to scrutinise all the laws covering these subjects and scratch out laws that are in conflict with one another.
According to reformers, the CDC was generous enough to grant the new bodies they wanted.
The public perception of this matter is different, however, and revolves around two key issues.
On one hand, if the country is really in need of reform, including the 18 areas identified by the military regime, aren’t we supposed to reform the biggest government agencies as well, as well as all the ministries?
The Oxford Dictionaries website defines the verb “reform” as “to make changes in (something, especially an institution or practice) in order to improve it”.
The definition is clear enough that reform indicates improvement of institutions. Why haven’t there been any proposals to improve existing government institutions? We all realise that no agency is perfect, so every side should be focused on making everything better for the country.
Possibly the big ministries are too stubborn to admit they are in need of reform too. The reformers themselves acknowledge the problem and that is why they have suggested setting up a new agency to scrutinise the existing agencies.
On the other hand, it is also clear that even related agencies do not trust each other’s work, jurisdiction and authority. Setting up an oversight organisation would make it easier to scrutinise the main government agencies.
According to one drafter, while the main objective was to reform the country, the proposals from the NRC were merely trying to solve previous problems and conflicts, and not focusing on reforming the country for the future.
Nevertheless, setting up a new independent body is easy, but it is far more difficult to merge two bodies or even dissolve them, and has the potential to cause disputes in society.
Dissolving a body or merging two bodies would raise complications, as seen with the proposal to merge the National Human Rights Commission with the Office of the Ombudsman, two independent organisations set up under a previous constitution. The merger idea encountered strong opposition from the NHRC.
What the public has learned from this matter is that there are fewer problems in setting up new agencies than with dissolving an existing one. Besides, dissolving an independent body could stall the national reform plan as well.
