Paiboon, as president of the Phuket Provincial Administration Organisation (PPAO), is – or was – the head of the elected administrative body for the entire island, unlike the provincial governor, appointed by the Interior Ministry in Bangkok. (See story here.)
You’d think that this news would create an almighty buzz on Phuket, especially after a year under military rule installed by a coup staged under the very banner of clearing corruption, and especially after the great taxi mafia takedown of 2014 that saw Patong patriarch Pian Keesin and two of his sons arrested.
But that didn’t happen. Interest in this one spiked, then tanked.
If there were any barometer of how much an issue affects people, it is how quickly it falls from interest, but it’s not likely that interest plunged in the Paiboon case because people are not affected if such claims are true. More likely is that it came as no surprise, especially as corruption is so widely perceived to be endemic throughout every level of officialdom in the country.
Paiboon is not alone in facing blanket allegations of corruption. Hundreds of officials around the country have been transferred, suspended or otherwise sidelined, all because they were named by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) as suspected of corruption.
The sad hilarity of it all is how anyone could be innocent in a system of institutionalised corruption. Even officials who are only bystanders to the goings-on around them are guilty of complicity.
Also keep in mind that only weeks ago Tarit Pengdith was deposed as the head of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) for being “unusually wealthy” and accused of choosing his targets of investigation – an odd accusation as Tarit worked under the orders of an executive committee, just as the NACC does. Who is responsible for what remains to be seen.
The NACC would do well to stay clear of any similar vagaries. Also absent from the NACC’s list of suspected corrupt officials were police.
As long as the NACC maintains its supposed purge in the name of clearing corruption all is well, but as soon as it falters, even in perception of choosing its targets, it will look like nothing more than an enforced power shift rippling through the country, changing only the players, but not the game.