Chang Noi: Banharn's Museum to Money Politics by Phairath Khampha 26 April 2000 In the centre of Thailand's Suphanburi, former Thai prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa built a museum to commemorate his political success--a monument to himself and his vanity. The most striking exhibits are four carved bas-reliefs which illustrate his life. Each panel tells a story in a style which is midway between Thai temple paintings and the political murals loved by populist and socialist regimes such as Mexico and North Korea, pompous works of art of self-grandeur. The first panel illustrates his lowly background and his tough early years in the Suphanburi market. The second traces his rise in both business and politics. The dominating image shows Banharn in a construction hard-hat set amid scenes of scaffolding, cabling and earth-moving equipment. The third celebrates his rise to national leadership, with streams of people coming to pay their respects like the subjects of a beloved monarch or the adherents of a powerful faith. Children kneel and wai their thanks for their good school. The people of Suphanburi walk in a joyous procession past Banharn standing framed by a Chinese gateway. The fourth panel shows Banharn, the local boy made good, stepping out beyond Thailand as leader on a world scale. Banharn Silpa-archa has been the most successful Thai politician of the last 25 years of the 20th century. He first became an elected member of Thailand's parliament and member of the Cabinet in 1976. Since then he was left out of only three of the 11 governments installed by election. He has run every important ministry - Interior, Finance, Communications, Industry and Agriculture. In the early 1990s, he eased aside the Chart Thai Party's founder, Pramarn Adireksarn, Pongpol's father, to become party leader and prime minister. He has built his home base, Suphanburi, into a monument to his political career. He has launched his daughter into the Cabinet and is preparing the way for his son. Chuan Leekpai may claim more years as prime minister. But he cannot compete with Banharn on his record of staying in the Cabinet, constructing his own political legacy, and launching his own dynastic succession through incredibly corrupt means. Banharn has literally robbed the Thai nation, although not yet at the level of Indonesia's former President Soeharto. Banharn has been the unquestioned star of Thailand's age of corrupt money politics. There have been several competitors for this infamous and questionable honour. But in the final judgement, he stands alone. He has 'excelled' at the five main principles for success in this era. 1 - Be rich and be generous. One cannot play money politics without having money. One cannot play it well without having lots; especially in Thailand. Banharn made his first fortune as a supplier to government departments in the 1960s through corrupt contracts set up with venal government officials to whom he paid kickbacks. He first sold chlorine and then water pipes to the Department of Public Works, notorious in Thailand for its level of corruption. He then branched out into construction contracting, which in Thailand is an even more corrupt and intrnsparent activity. He learnt the importance of generosity in gaining and maintaining profitably monopolistic relationships with officials. He still supplies chlorine, 30 years later. He made his second fortune by investing in Suphanburi at the same time he was in a position to pump government funds into the province's economy, starting in the mid-1980s. He invested in land, gas stations, a rice mill, a hotel, auto dealerships, a finance company and a school. Unusually large flows from the government budget pumped up the Suphanburi economy. Banharn's investments and businesses rose on the tide. A tide he created. 2 - Build a local base using other people's money. Suphanburi has wider roads, bigger and glossier public buildings, more schools, more hospitals, more public facilities of all kinds than any other province in Thailand other than, perhaps, Chiang Mai, another nest of corrupt officials who spend their days carrying out nefarious activities from trafficking in drugs and teenage girls, to outright theft and Mafia-like activities. Drive into the town of Suphanburi and it seems grander than any other provincial centre. Climb up the observation tower that Banharn built and one discovers it is really a very small place. As an MP, Banharn paid special attention to the budget process. He always got himself on the House Budget Committee. He made friends in the Budget Bureau. It was no surprise when he selected as his finance minister a Budget Bureau official who had helped him channel disproportionate amounts of money towards Suphanburi. With these inordinate flows of money, local business people got rich; all friends and relatives of Banharn. Local contractors did well. Local people got good facilities. They all know who to thank, who to keep sending back to parliament to sit on the budget committee. The power this patronage conveys was formidable. At the Senate election in March 2000, villagers stated that Banharn's people had threatened to rip up the road to their village if they did not vote for Banharn's candidates. It has happened in the past as, after all, Banharn is truly the godfather of Suphanburi Province and many people have vioelently died for getting into his way or the way of his children. That is Thai style. 3 - Recycle power into money so the system becomes self-sustaining. Winning elections, log-rolling coalitions and holding a party together all cost money. If the money invested in gaining power were not somehow recouped by the exercise of power, the system of money politics would collapse. Before the 1995 election, Banharn let slip: "For a politician, being in opposition is like starving yourself to death." Of course this area is very murky as the rules are not published for public consumption as it would be a tacit admission of one's own venal nature. But there seems to be three main methods for recycling power into cash. The first is straightforward siphoning from government expenditure, often through kickbacks from suppliers and contractors allowed to over-price their services. This is a common and well-entrenched business practice in Thailand. Banharn was identified for carrying out this form of corruption in a no-confidence debate in 1987, when he was minister of communications. He was targeted again in 1991, when the coup junta of General Suchinda and the late General Sunthorn initially placed him at the top of their list of "extraordinarily rich", with four times more unexplainable assets than anyone else on the list. After agreeing to resign from the prime ministership in 1996 for obviously being extremely corrupt and embarrassing the country, Banharn hung on to office for one final week, during which time he devoted to approving huge numbers of project contracts, mainly for building roads. His family and friends who run construction contracting firms got the jobs. The second method for recycling power into cash is the delicate use of position for profit. In the 1996 no confidence debate, Banharn was caught profiting by selling a piece of land to the Bank of Thailand while he was finance minister. A slight conflict of interest, one might say. When he rose in parliament to answer this charge, he was like a gulping goldfish, feigning all sorts of incredulity. The third method is the sale of promotions, or "queue management" as it is known in Thai. The commerce in positions was arguably one of Thailand's growth industries of the 1990s. From the beginning of 2000 the Civil Service Commission started researching the extent. In all ministries where he served, Banharn was famous for the close attention he paid to personnel. When his brother, Chumphol, resigned as education minister, he showed his exasperation at Banharn's meddling in this part of his job. Pongphol Adireksarn made similar suggestions after being pushed out of the Agriculture Ministry. This is particularly true when he found out that Banharn had "arranged" for Halcrow Water and TEAM Engineering to win a lucrative technical assistance contract from the Asian Development Bank, part of the financing towards a $600 million ADB loan for agricultural and water resources management restructuring. TEAM Engineering has carried out the design and construction management many of Banharn's pet projects in Suphanburi and elsewhere. Prasert Patramai, the chairman of TEAM Engineering is a very good acquaintance of Banharn's and has done business with him. Another engineering firm entangled in this web of intrigue is ASDECON Corporation Limited. Its managing director Chawalit Chantararat worked behind the scenes for Banharn during the proposal stage of the water resources capacity building technical assistance to set up the political conditions that would see TEAM Engineering being awarded the technical assistance. ASDECON Corporation Limited, founded in 1989, is a Thai engineering consulting firm whose clients are the ADB, state enterprises and government agencies, particularly Thailand's Royal Irrigation Department which comes under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. ASDECON has carried out numerous water resources projects for the RID and for Banharn's pet water resources and irrigation projects. ASDECON also happens to be a subsidiary firm of TEAM Engineering. On the subject of the ADB loan, Banharn and another former minister, Suphin Pinkayan, also were at odds as the latter is a more transparent and ethical individual, by Thai standards, who also tried to protect the nation's economic interests from the corrupt activities of Banharn. With the power that he does have, Banharn therefore politically diminished Suphin's influence in certain circles. Suphin is the owner of Thailand's first and largest private engineering consulting firm, SEATEC. SEATEC and a Canadian engineering consulting firm had formed a consortium to also bid on the ADB technical assistance aimed at reforming Thailand's management of its water resources. SEATEC was the perferred firm within the Royal Irrigation Department and with the Office of National Water Resources Committee. Banharn, however, let it be known that SEATEC was not to be the chosen firm because of his concern that its more transparent and ethical mode of operation would reveal his plans to siphon off considerable amounts of the ADB loan, if not throw a wrench into his plans. During the proposal stage for the technical assistance, Chawalit Chantararat spent considerable time and effort trying to get ASDECON to be part of the consortium with the other firms bidding for the technical assistance. He contacted the other four firms and solicited their participation. One reason was to glean information with respect to the proposal preparation to report to TEAM Engineering and thus ensure TEAM's proposal was at least as good. And on the outside chance that TEAM were not awarded the technical assistance, then there was at least double the chance that TEAM, through ASDECON, would be there to ensure the technical assistance was carried out in accordance to Banharn's wishes. In the bidding business this is known as double dipping and obviously smacks of dubious ethics and of a conflict of interest. Although the ultimate decision for awarding the contracted rested with the ADB which claims new procedures are aimed at increasing transparency in the bid process, it nevertheless would appear the ADB, for diplomatic expediency, awarded the contract to TEAM, which has rather too close relations with Banharn's empire. After all, Banharn runs the show, it seems, and if the ADB is to get its way in Thailand, it has to cooperate or, at the very least, make sure it does not interfere with the activities of Banharn or people of similar ilk. The ADB has certain designs and intentions with respect to Thailand's economic development and subsequent neo-colonialism by the multinational corporations in the end it must support as, after all, it is those same countries that provide the funds the bank needs. Much of Thailand's common people see the ADB's activities in Thailand as harmful to their economic well-being. As part of the $600 million loan the ADB made certain demands to meet these intentions. The ADB was intent that the loan contract be signed with Thailand and, as much as possible, under its terms. These terms suited Banharn, although many Thais feel that on the long run the ADB's would hurt Thailand's rural people and the poor, particularly as it relates to provision of irrigation water. But Banharn could care less about the poor, except where they stand to put him in a position where he can siphon money from the government into his pockets. 4 - Ignore public opinion and political alignments. The generals who carried out the 1991 coup singled out Banharn as the worst example of political corruption and placed him at the head of the list of those found to be "unusually rich". Within weeks, the charges were dropped and Banharn became one of the strongest supporters of the coup regime. As a result he was identified as "absolutely satanic" after the military fell from power in the events of May 1992. But less than three years later, he clambered back into the prime ministership. In mid-1995, he was targeted by the Democrat Party in one of the most vicious no-confidence debates ever seen. According to the charges, he had enriched his family from deals on land, logs and arms; was proven to have falsified records to avoid the charge of being "unusually rich"; perverted the budget process to beautify Suphanburi; and awarded construction contracts in suspicious ways. Two years later, he was invited to become a coalition partner in a Democrat government. 5 - Never let blood, friendship or past services stand in your way. Money knows no sentiment. Money politics is about transactions, not emotions. Many have bounced out of the Chart Thai Party because they found themselves on the wrong end of a deal. The recent discarding of his brother,Chumphol, and his old patron's son, Pongphol, are not a surprise. Banharn's negative sentiments towards Suphin is another example. Since 1997, the Chart Thai Party has run under the slogan: "Total reform for total development". With this slogan, Banharn projected his leadership through the transition from the old politics to the new. But the four men Banharn promoted in the reshuffle in early April 2000 positioned him firmly still in the old politics. One is a henchman and contractor who rose on the budget flood in Suphanburi. Another runs the local illegal casino. The third is the son of Thailand's best known godfather. The fourth was the deputy interior minister in charge of law and order at the time of the massacre of May 1992 in the streets of Bangkok when Thai troops fired at least a million rounds of M-16 fire into thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators. At the time, The Nation placed him eighth on a list of Thailand's "most hated men"--hated by Thailand's populace. Through his career, Banharn has gathered nicknames with a theme of money - the "walking ATM", Long Ju (the accountant), and head of the "7-Eleven Cabinet", open for business all day and every day. In the Suphanburi museum there is just one exhibit which alludes to Banharn's domination of this age of money politics: his first abacus.