Two different schools for scandal

26 February 1998

The Chuan Leekpai Cabinet passes 100 days. The IMF announces the financial crisis has eased. And bingo! The scandals and crises pile up like garbage in Soi Onnuj. Tens of thousands of farmers threaten to pour into Bangkok. The sugar bribe. The Yadana pipeline down to the wire. And, most of all, the Salween affair, the scandal which has everything: five million baht in a box. Salang Bunnag. Karens with guns. Tons and tons of illegal logs. Mr S and Soldier K. And the promise of lots to come.

It is back to business as usual. The workings of Thai politics may be arcane, but they are very reliable. They have been for years. Press and politicians have sparred over scandals since the 1930s. Yet in the last decade there has been a change of scale. The parliamentary opposition has become more active and more vigilant. The press and television have gradually broken down old barriers. Now the Salween affair promises to push scandals to a new level. Footage shot along the river, and penetrating interviews with key people involved have made the issue very real, very immediate and very open.

It is not a new scandal at all. Reports on the scale of destruction have been leaking over over the past two years. Tan Mui’s film "Salween", which told much the same story to great dramatic effect, is almost a decade old (why doesn’t a TV channel show it now?).

Scandals have become one of the constants of Thai political life. But not all scandals are the same. Or, more exactly, different governments have different patterns of scandal.

Since the big change of 1988, we have had two types of government (excluding those under a coup): Chat Thai coalitions in 1988-91 and 1994-95; and Democrat coalitions in 1992-4, and since November. The New Aspiration coalition in 1995-96 took a lot of people and a lot of flavour from Banharn’s disintegrating Chat Thai party and can be considered an honorary member of the first type.

Except for the last Cabinet, all have been felled by scandal. But the two types of government represent two very different schools for scandal.

The Chat Thai school is a rather traditional, old-fashioned school. The cabinet-felling scandals all fit into the category of kin muang, "eating the land" the traditional practice of leveraging power for personal profit. In its modernised form, kin muang involves the commercialisation of ministerial power through selling favours, taking kickbacks and looting the public purse.

In 1990 under the Chatichai Choonhavan government, a deputy interior minister was accused of corruption and eased out of his post. Piqued, he decided to spill the beans. He admitted he had used his ministerial power to build a road in his constituency, route it through his family landholding, and award the construction contract to a company in which he held a share.

He then went on to describe how garment export quotas, import licences, provincial bus concessions, MPs’ votes on no-confidence motions, and much else were up for sale by his ministerial colleagues. He described how his party leader had tutored him in the art of making money discreetly from a ministership.

After the fall of Chatichai, 25 Cabinet members and associates were accused of becoming "unusually rich", and 12 were found guilty of having amassed about a billion baht and 8,000-9,000 rai of land while in office. The convictions were later quashed on the grounds that the judicial process was improper. But the investigation revealed that ministers had received large amounts in gift cheques from companies which had won government contracts and concessions.

Under Banharn Silpa-archa, a minister came under suspicion for promoting a suspicious fertiliser scheme and a dam project which would generate big logging profits. A foreign journalist alleged large backhanders in the purchase of submarines. The local press raised similar suspicions about armoured cars. Some ministers were rumoured to be selling promotions to their subordinates.

In the final no-confidence debate, the opposition alleged Banharn had fiddled records to avoid charges of being "unusually rich"; profiteered from selling land to the central bank; perverted the budget process to beautify Suphanburi; and awarded infrastructure contracts under suspicious circumstances.

Under Chavalit Yonchaiyudh, rumours and accusation focused on roads built and school computer equipment bought at inflated cost, and outrageous profits made from fore-knowledge of the baht flotation.

The big scandals surrounding Democrat governments have been very different. They revolve around the illegal exploitation of natural resources of land and forest on a large scale. Under the 1992-94 Chuan Leekpai government, a minister was accused of manipulating forest concessions to allow certain companies to get away with logging with high profit and doubtful legality (the Tha Chana scandal).

Several people in Phuket, including some associated with the Democrat Party, were found to have acquired valuable land under the SPK 4-01 scheme for distributing land to poor, landless farmers. Under this government, we now have the Salween scandal about massive illegal logging. (An earlier scandal over eucalyptus concessions involving Democrat ministers in the Chatichai coalition fits the same pattern.)

This school for scandal is more modern and more complex than the Chat Thai kin muang school.

For a start, the scandals which emerge are only a small indication of a much bigger problem. Tha Chana was not the only place where forest concessions were being manipulated. The SPK 4-01 scheme was exploited by land-grabbers in many more provinces than Phuket. Large-scale illegal logging is not limited to the Salween, since an estimated 1.25 million rai of forest is still disappearing every year. The scandals which break the surface are just the tips of icebergs.

The real basis of these scandals is itthiphon (influence) which still rules local Thailand. This influence is a combination of ruthless businessmen and corrupt or weak officials. The Salween affair is a perfect example. Everyone involved knows that the extraction of illegal timber on this scale requires a large stock of capital and collusion of men in uniforms of various colours.

But why do these scandals emerge under a Democrat regime? First and obviously, because some Democrats have their base in this local influence, and they create the opportunity for local scandals to become political and exciting. But the reasons are more subtle than just that.

Such scandals are less likely to emerge during a Chat Thai-type regime because many of the key figures in these Cabinets have their power base in these networks of local influence. Blowing the whistle can be dangerous, or simply ineffective. The massive Nong Khai land scandal emerged under Banharn but was somehow managed away. Earlier attempts to send up a signal flare over the Salween destruction were simply ignored. How would Chavalit or Banharn have dealt with the five million baht in a box?

Further, the Democrats create a more open environment. They do not harass the media. They revive the on-off career of Seri Temiyavej. They provide just enough room for local protesters, NGOs, honest officials or campaigning journalists to blow the first whistle.

Two schools of scandal. One is a very old-fashioned school, still using the dusty traditional manual for "eating the land". The other is a much more complex affair, moulded by the conflicting tendencies inside the Democrat Party—between city and provinces, international aspirations and provincial roots, modernising goals and the financial realities of Tha politics.

Two schools, but so far only one result. The scandals fell governments but do not cure problems. The practice of kin muang has become more sophisticated, but there is no sign of any significant decrease. The exposure of SPK 4-01 led to no overhaul of the administration of land. Tha Chana caused no revolution in the forestry department.

The kin muang games and resource grabbing are two of the big examples of bad governance. Over the last decade, they are much more out in the open. But so far, the scandals are just the tunes played for the musical chairs of party politics. Maybe the Salween scandal can be something new and different—a catalyst for a real assault on the networks of influence involved, rather than just the occasion for another no-confidence drama or another shuffle of political faces.