Beating corruption needs strong action and enhanced scrutiny

Many people are calling for Prayut, in his capacity as leader of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), to use his widespread powers under Article 44 of the provisional charter. For them, this absolute power could be applied easily to tackle the deep-rooted problem of corruption. They expect Prayut to act swiftly and severely against allegedly corrupt state officials. 

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) appears to be highly hopeful of results after submitting to the prime minister a list of public officials suspected of graft. They are also set to submit an additional list to the government’s National Administrative Centre against Corruption. 

It is understandable that many people are placing high hopes on the government’s efforts to tackle the corruption problem. This “social cancer” has long been weakening our country. For those people, this move may be their last hope.

Extra care must be taken in dealing with this matter. It is risky to apply special powers in punishing state officials on the list. The authorities involved could be in danger of making a mistake, as the scrutiny process is less efficient than when it is carried out through the normal justice process. 

Certainly, corrupt officials deserve punishment and they should not complain about that. However, we cannot be completely sure all the suspects named on the list actually committed irregularities. 

It is through the normal justice process that we can believe without doubt that the accused are actually the wrongdoers – because the accused can produce evidence to prove their innocence.

Punishment through special powers is no different from abrupt transfers of senior officials by some previous governments that were described as unfair. Although the officials involved may have actually committed the wrongdoing, they could distort the facts by claiming they were victims of political persecution. This is different from a normal justice system in that all the accused and the accuser must accept the courts’ verdicts.

Certainly, the normal justice process is slow. But if all parties involved work together against the corrupt officials, the guilty will eventually end up in jail.

Thailand’s corruption problem is deep-rooted and it is unlikely to be solved through a shortcut method or just by severe penalties against some wrongdoers. We need to look into the root cause of the problem – a system that makes it easy to be corrupt.

A system that facilitates corruption is one in which scrutiny is weak or inefficient. This refers to a system where the authorised official is extremely powerful.

If only one senior official is authorised to issue a permit, there is a strong likelihood that individuals will end up being corrupt, although the official may previously have been honest. This is because personal desires could corrupt anyone.

So, it is better to have a group of people to do the screening and make decisions than having to rely on only one person.

Big corporations with good governance and countries with minimal corruption do not achieve that through severe punishment alone. Rather, they have a stringent and effective scrutinising system.

To get rid of corruption, we do not just allow good people to hold power; but we should assume there is the likelihood for anyone to become corrupt. The solution is to keep full power out of the hands of any one individual as much as possible.