Corruption: 'bt30 Billion To Be Spent Buying Votes

[george]

CORRUPTION: 'Bt30 billion to be spent buying votes'

Nesac urges party leaders to commit themselves to stamping out practice

BANGKOK: -- A government advisory council yesterday estimated that more than Bt30 billion would be spent for vote-buying ahead of the upcoming general election early next year.

The National Economic and Social Advisory Council (Nesac) called on all political party leaders yesterday to pledge that their members would not buy votes in the upcoming general election.

"Vote-buying is the beginning of corruption as elected politicians will then want to recoup their 'investments' while in office," Nesac deputy chairman Sangsit Piriyarangsan said in a closing statement at a council-organised seminar in Pattaya on people's participation in eradicating corruption.

Sangsit said about Bt30 billion was spent under suspicious circumstances in the two months ahead of the 2001 general election.

The amount will be even higher prior to the election early next year, he said. "If the government is sincere about tackling corruption, Thai Rak Thai Party leader [Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra] should publicly announce that he will not accept anyone involved in vote-buying," Sangsit said.

Sangsit said he was most concerned about policy corruption because it was the form most difficult to prevent and eradicate.

"Politicians buy votes to get into power. They then have the power to make policies and amend laws. They have access to information and privileges that others cannot challenge," Sangsit said.

The government must also investigate rental fees from about 500 state radio stations, owned by the armed forces, the National Police Office and the Mass Communication Organisation of Thailand, he said.

"There's about Bt10 billion involved in the rental fees but this amount does not go into the state budget system. It is spent on what's called 'welfare' and we need to know whose welfare it is and how it is spent," Sangsit said.

The radio stations belong to the state and thus it is inappropriate for the rental fees to be spent on any particular group, he said.

An estimated Bt400 million was also paid under the table to obtain rights to operate these radio stations, Sangsit said.

--The Nation 2004-06-28

[stumonster]

what is the go with all these elections on this year? there is another one in july.

Is it all tied in to the general election?

Maybe knocking the football deal on the head, was done to save some funds for later in the year?

[ProThaiExpat]

Today's headline in the BKK Post qotes Thaksin's plan to rid the country of corruption by giving low level police and government workers pay raises.

I guess there is no corruption among high salaried goverment officials and people are only corrupt until they have enough money to live on, as he was quoted, ie. corruption in Thailand only exists among the needy.

Thanksin should be successfult with this plan, just as he was in ridding the country of drugs in just six months last year. I believe he actually "declared" Thailand free of drugs.

[Dutchy2]

Today's headline in the BKK Post qotes Thaksin's plan to rid the country of corruption by giving low level police and government workers pay raises.

I guess there is no corruption among high salaried goverment officials and people are only corrupt until they have enough money to live on, as he was quoted, ie. corruption in Thailand only exists among the needy.

Thanksin should be successfult with this plan, just as he was in ridding the country of drugs in just six months last year. I believe he actually "declared" Thailand free of drugs.

There is some essential information missing here, Thaksin planned to do this in his next term, so please vote for him again. He won't do anything about it now, but next term. Vote for Thaksin and you'll all get pay raises, next term then. The vermin...

Dutch

[mango head]

If there's going to be 30 billion baht spent on vote buying, where is the line for that? I want my wife to be in it.

[ProThaiExpat]

Dutchy2:

If would appear from the essential information you provided that "vote buying" is now being accomplished on credit, ie. a promise to pay in exchange for the vote.

Unbelievable!!!

[Limbo]

Approximately 30 to 40 % of public finances in Thailandare are non-productive costs, connected to the spending of the remaining 70 to 60 %.

This amount is much higher than in most parts of the world. In Singapore it is only 2 or 3 %.

This means a lot for the people living in Thailand.

For the same costs the roads could be 30 % longer, 30 % wider or 30 % stronger. There would be 30 % more streetlights and so on, and so on, and so on.

The schoolclasses could have an average 35 of students in stead of 55.

There would be 30 % more docters and 30 % more hospitalbeds, 30 % more ambulances and nurses. Medicine would be 30 % cheaper.

All public services would increase with 30 to 40 %.

I hope that Dr. Taksin will be succesful in his fight against corruption. It will not be easy, because it is concidered normal by the people involved.

And many people who are not involved concider it as normal as well; they only hope that they in their next life will be able to be corrupt as well.

Maybe it is normal. Look at the salaries and bonusses the top-managers in the western world agree upon giving thenselves.

They are not calculated in the information the international watchdog on corruption gives us. Shouldn't they as well?

Laws are like channels to limit peoples greed, 'the human greed' might be better. Corruption will never limit itself by the free will of the people concerned.

We are not better! Our laws probaby are and the way they are inforced.

[john b good]

I hope that Dr. Taksin will be succesful in his fight against corruption. It will not be easy, because it is concidered normal by the people involved.

And many people who are not involved concider it as normal as well; they only hope that they in their next life will be able to be corrupt as well.

I hope that Dr. Taksin will be succesful in his fight against corruption

Please don't hold your breath on Thaksin doing too much.

Corruption is endemic to the Thai way of life. There are no moral barriers against and it is accepted by the majority of Thai people.

If someone is not actually involved on a personal basis (i.e. not themselves receiving or giving financial enducements for personal benefit) they are very often benefiting from the corruption of others (mia noi's and the like etc)

A person who would not personally prostitute themselves would in many cases be willing to accept the "dirty money" that is the proceeds of corruption and vice.

A couple of general elections back when pick up trucks were going around the villages with sacks of 20 & 50 baht notes I told my wife to refuse any money offered as an enducement to vote.

I told her that whatever amount of money she and her mother declined I would double it.

And back to Thaksin!, he is a very big part of the problem and is certainly not the answer to the problem.

[Dutchy2]

I told her that whatever amount of money she and her mother declined I would double it.

And back to Thaksin!, he is a very big part of the problem and is certainly not the answer to the problem.

Hmm John, I think you could do better to approach this problem on a larger scale. Why don't you offer all mia farangs on this board more than they'd get from the Thai political parties? That would have a larger effect on the business of vote buying, your wife and her mother are only two people on an electorate of .... million people..

[plachon]

A person who would not personally prostitute themselves would in many cases be willing to accept the "dirty money" that is the proceeds of corruption and vice.

A couple of general elections back when pick up trucks were going around the villages with sacks of 20 & 50 baht notes I told my wife to refuse any money offered as an enducement to vote.

I told her that whatever amount of money she and her mother declined I would double it.

So how much did you cough up in the end then John?

Seems to me you were just encouraging dependency and greed. "Don't accept that dirty money mae yai, it's been stolen from the people. Don't you see that once you've taken it, the evil MP will take it back twice over once he's in. Take my clean money instead and we'll solve the problem together".

Until the twin vices of greed and ignorance have been removed, then it's all just pissing in the wind I'm afraid. In Bangkok, education has partly eliminated the latter, so vote buying has diminished, but the former is at least as strong as in the provinces and so the country still gets leaders it doesn't deserve. Or perhaps does deserve?

[spidermike007]

The aspect that is not getting mentioned much, is why Thailand has so little interest in addressing it's staggering level of corruption. Malaysia has set up a corruption commission, and is making DAILY arrests of top officials, ministers, local politicians, and businessmen. Indonesia has set up a corruption commission, and so far their antigraft commission has achieved a 100-percent conviction rate in 86 cases of bribery and graft related to government procurements and budgets. And where is Thailand in all of this. Why aren't men like Newin, and others, who are coming up with expensive schemes to line their pockets being arrested, and tried? Why is the CEO of King Power still employed? Why is the Police Captain in charge of the airport security, who appears to be involved in the King Power scam, still in his position? Does anyone really think there is even a chance that the King Power scheme is not real? That they are arresting only guilty shoplifters? Does all King Power have to do is post one video on the internet, of a guilty party, for all of us to let them off the hook? Is that all it takes? Even India is getting actively involved in tackling corruption, as this article indicates. When was the last time he heard of a government minister, or top official, or corporate CEO being arrested on corruption charges?

In India, New Crusade on Corruption

By HEATHER TIMMONS

Published: July 30, 2009

NEW DELHI —When Ashwani Kumar took over as India’s top anticorruption official last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his new boss, advised him, “Follow the righteous path.”

Sanjit Das for The New York Times

Under Ashwani Kumar, the Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested dozens of bank officials, engineers and contractors suspected of crimes. Yet the job before him had frustrated many others. India ranks 85th in a corruption perception index created by the nonprofit antigraft group Transparency International, worse than China, Mexico or Brazil. Mr. Kumar, 58, a career policeman and director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, has taken his Sisyphean task head on. In just a few months, he has heightened the visibility of India’s fight against complex corporate crimes and enlisted public support for his programs to battle corruption in the government.

Most notably, his agency’s business investigative skills gained acclaim internationally, after the founder and chairman of one of India’s largest information technology companies, Satyam Computer Systems, confessed to falsifying $1 billion in cash on its balance sheet in January, India’s largest and broadest modern fraud. Just 45 days after taking the case, the Central Bureau of Investigation had charged six people and produced a thorough account of how investigators suspected the fraud had occurred, based on hundreds of interviews and backed by thousands of pages of documents. The bureau even described the minutiae of the accounting tricks and dual-invoicing tactics used to commit the fraud.

In contrast, the United States Department of Justice took years to put together a compelling case against top executives of Enron, the now-bankrupt energy company. The comparison may not be completely parallel, because a confession revealed the fraud at Satyam. But the scale of the accounting scheme has led analysts and academics to label Satyam “India’s Enron.” Sudhakar V. Balachandran, an assistant professor of accounting at Columbia Business School, said the United States could learn a lot from India’s rapid response to Satyam. Foreign investors “know that swift decisive actions were taken,” Mr. Balachandran said. “If I’m an investor looking at an emerging market, I’m going to look for signs that it functions well.” That includes undertaking a swift criminal investigation at the first sign of corruption or fraud, he said.

Some rights advocates say that the bureau has been overzealous and has ignored due process. Under the bureau’s guidance, two of Satyam’s outside auditors have been in jail for seven months without trial, held on charges of criminal conspiracy. They have been denied bail, even though they maintain their innocence and have yet to be convicted of any crime. Mr. Kumar’s office, however, contends that their incarceration is justified.

Beyond Satyam, Mr. Kumar has big ambitions for the bureau. With just 5,000 agents, it is less than half the size of its closest American equivalent, the F.B.I., although India’s population is more than four times that of the United States. But India’s bureau is trying new ways to fight graft and bribery that may help make up for what it lacks in numbers. For example, the bureau is embarking on a countrywide campaign to curb corruption that enlists support from the public by asking for people to use their cellphones to text in details of corruption. Economic growth, increasing industrialization and globalization mean that economic crime is rising, Mr. Kumar said. “Traditional crimes are fading into the background” in favor of digital crimes and credit card fraud, he said. Since Mr. Kumar took office, the bureau has arrested dozens of bank managers, bureaucrats, engineers and contractors on suspicion of crimes including accepting bribes, forging documents and stealing petroleum. A recent investigation into top officials at the All India Council for Technical Education, a group created by the government to improve the vocational skills of India’s youth, uncovered 36 bank accounts that were used to hide illicit cash. At a meeting this year with private sector bankers, Mr. Kumar pledged that the bureau would act as a “facilitator in the growth of the financial sector,” by curbing something that United States regulators had failed to stop — mortgage fraud and risky lending.

Mr. Kumar seems at first like an unlikely crusader against complex financial fraud. He spent much of his 35-year career in the forests of the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh, fighting illegal logging and poaching. But he quickly rose through the ranks of India’s civil service, becoming director general of police in the state. His success there caught the eye of the Singh administration.

The law has played a big role in the Kumar family. His father was a policeman, and he is married to the daughter of a policeman.

Discussing respect for the environment gets him fired up, and he is thrilled to point out that the bureau’s new headquarters will be a “green” building. His office is spotless, he is scrupulously polite and he sticks to a rigorous schedule that involves waking at 4 a.m. for two hours of work, then an hour of exercise. Mr. Kumar says his prominent cases have earned him enemies. And he cautions that the bureau cannot halt corruption on its own. The bureau deals with the investigation, “but the punishment is given by the courts,” he said. And he willingly acknowledges that corruption sometimes occurs within the bureau.

“Human beings are always frail, and such incidents do happen,” he said. “The question is, ‘Do we tolerate this kind of behavior?’ The answer is, ‘Absolutely no.’ ” Corruption specialists say that his fight can be effective, even if he is surrounded by a corrupt system. “One person can make a difference, just as all leaders can make a difference,” said Christiaan Poortman, global programs director for Transparency International. In Mr. Kumar’s case, his anticorruption efforts may bear fruit, Mr. Poortman said. “If he has the ear of the prime minister, who knows? It might work,” Mr. Poortman added.

[Koo82]

I don't think Thailand has so little interest. It's just that if anyone is on Khun Thaksin's side, the cases will get priority. Khun Thaksin is stuck with his "corruption" case that his wife bought a land, seller and buyer had no fault but he signing ok for his wife to buy must be in jail 2 years. Khun Samak, Former Prime Minister who cooked on tv, was down for receiving small money for those cooking shows