Corruption, codes of dishonour, and organized crime

4 September 2000

There’s a lot of mythology about corruption. Like espionage, it’s covert, secret and dirty. It excites imaginations. Thailand always does badly in the international league tables on corruption. But what do these measure? Corruption has lots of meanings. What really is the problem?

Last week four surveys on corruption in government were presented by four Thai research teams. The results are not comprehensive. But they start to show more clearly what the problems are, and where the solutions have to be found. Three of the surveys tried to quantify the problem, and identify the worst areas. The other took a deeper look at corruption as "subculture".

The first finding is positive. Thailand has passed beyond the era of petty bureaucratic squeeze. A national survey of households showed the vast majority of people dealing with the district office, utility supplier, hospital, post office or passport office are not forced to pay money to get anything done. If they are, the amount is rather small. Even though officials have miserable salaries, most don’t try to supplement them by squeezing their fellow citizen. They might be moonlighting at another job or sideline business. But that’s different

There is still bureaucratic corruption. But it is very specific. It is mostly confined to a few offices whose actions have large financial significance—the land offices, tax offices, customs, police and courts. It mostly involves large payments—five to seven figure sums. It is mostly demanded of private businessmen. The household survey found over 90 percent of all bribes demanded were of this type.

A second survey of businessmen confirmed this. Four-fifths of them said it had become "normal practice" to pay officials to get things done. Again the customs, tax, courts, police and land offices were identified, along with procurement officers and the electricity suppliers. But the biggest problem was not officials, but politicians. In the ranking of those who asked for payments most often, politicians came second. In the ranking of the average amount requested, they came top. By a mile.

Both householders and businessmen think corruption is a serious national problem (worse than drugs); that it is getting worse; that the government is not sincere about tackling the problem; and that corruption is not reported because nothing will result and the whistle-blower will be at risk.

They also believe that the problem is worst among politicians, or politicians and bureaucrats working together. A third survey looked at the bribery surrounding government contracts. It found that the procedures for rigging contract bidding are now completely conventional. The standard skim is 20 percent, so bidders can build this into their estimates. Experts at contract-bidding plan ahead to capture a targeted amount of the annual government budget. One political fixer told the researcher: no matter how you change and tighten the rules, I’ll always find a way round them.

The large-scale bribery by businessmen at a few government offices, and this contract rigging, have much in common. Some of it may be extortion practised by those with power against those with money. But it’s probably better to view it as collusion. Businessmen pay because in the long run it reduces their expenses and raises their profits. Politician and bureaucrat demand payment because they have the power to do so, and they never get caught. At the seminar to review this research, several people searched around for a phrase to sum up this practice—"tradition", "culture" or "subculture". Probably the most accurate is "organized crime".

In recent years, there have been many stories about officials buying promotion to the top jobs which allow access to this criminal club. A fourth survey talked to senior officials, and asked them if this was true—are bureaucratic positions bought? Half said no. But most of the other half agreed.

In this survey, most of the officials refused to answer most of the questions. The same questionnaire used in other countries did not have this result. The silence of Thai officials is very eloquent. Those surveyed know the bureaucracy’s problems and may even be sympathetic about solving them. But it is bad form to say anything which will reflect badly on the bureaucracy itself. This is a code of dishonour. One official suggested the researcher should question retired officials instead, because retirement releases them from the code.

What should happen if officials are caught? Most of the officials surveyed agreed they should be sacked. But should their names be made public? In a television discussion on the research, two officials insisted this would be unfair. It would bring dishonour to their families. This is another aspect of the code of dishonour. The gods deserve different treatment from ordinary men.

The research may have little new except some useful precision. But the fact that the research was done for the Civil Service Commission, and that it was presented to a seminar of 150 senior officials, is very new. Nothing similar has happened before. And the seminar began to brainstorm some realistic solutions.

First, something can be done by looking closely at official procedures. The customs office has studied where its procedures make corruption easy, and has begun to change them, especially through automation. The seminar suggested other officers where bribery is still problematic—especially land and tax—should follow suit.

Next, the codes of conduct for officials need to be stricter and clearer, and the mechanisms for public accountability need to improve. This is now official policy. But it doesn’t yet work. The scandal about over-pricing hospital drugs has seen the biggest-ever effort by the public to enforce accountability. But so far these efforts have been sandbagged. There have been no fewer than 41 committees or subcommittees appointed to "investigate" the matter, and smother it in confusion.

The major problem is the "organized crime" by politicians, businessmen and colluding officials. Thai corruption is not a petty small-scale affair of chiselling clerks, but a grand enterprise of which the mafia would be proud. Last week one of the country’s most notorious local politicians launched his election campaign by boasting of the abnormally high amounts he got from the public budget for the benefit of the province’s contractors. As someone at the Civil Service Commission’s seminar said, the problem is right at the top, among the people who set an example for everybody else. One other seminar participant suggested an intriguing solution: a "no wai" campaign. Withdraw the normal forms of social respect from big people who are suspected of malpractice. That may be one way to disturb the bureaucracy’s code of dishonour.

But what about politicians? At his recent party conference, Taksin declared a "war against corruption". This sounds nice. But sitting in the front row and applauding this rhetoric were the alleged bag-carrier for the "unusually rich" of 1991, and the man who was interior minister when several thousand house registrations "flew " across the border into his province, qualifying it for an extra parliamentary seat. Taksin himself famously gave a Daimler to a politician as a thank-you, and could not understand why some people thought this wrong.

The surveys showed that people have very little faith in the possibility that the system will reform itself. They have great hope in the new national Counter Corruption Commission. But seminar participants cautioned against placing too much hope in one body. Most people also think the most important force for combatting corruption at present is the media, followed by academics and NGOs.

This research won’t stop anything happening. But it just might start something.