Phuket Opinion: The road to greater autonomy

Phuket needs to have more autonomy to serve the needs of the island, as former Democrat Korn Chatikavanij, now of the Kla Party (“Brave Party”), pointed out last year.

The inability of Phuket to residents to elect their own Governor, as is done in the ‘Special Administrative Area’ of Pattaya, has hampered the island’s ability to direct efforts where they have been needed most. No other province in the country has been as deeply affected as Phuket by the COVID-19 impact on tourism, yet Phuket has not been permitted any special status to help support the island’s tourism-dependent industries devastated by the economic impact of the pandemic.

In terms of direct authoritarian control, it is difficult to see what Bangkok has to lose by declaring Phuket a Special Administration Area. Any elected Phuket Governor would have no more authority than the Governor of Pattaya. As evidenced all throughout the COVID pandemic, because of the continually extended state of emergency, Pattaya business operators and residents themselves have had to repeatedly appeal, often with sharp language, for Bangkok to provide assistance for their battered industries.

What Bangkok would lose is the extent of control it would have over provincial budgets, and not much speaks more loudly to national politicians than money. The current system was instituted under the Thaksin administration, making sure all major budgetary decisions were left to those in the capital.

The reason given publicly by the Thaksin government for tightening control over the budgetary decisions was so that it could be better allocated to priority projects. Yet in all the years since then – regardless of who has been in power – very little has come Phuket’s way, other than ludicrous mega-billion-baht projects that have taken decades to get rolling.

The reinvestment in Phuket’s tourism infrastructure development has been lacking. As Bill Barnett pointed out in reporting the sentiment at the Thailand Tourism Forum held last month, “You can’t just take from tourism and say we want more tourists, we want to have more, more, more… without re-investing.” Yet that is exactly what has happened.

Before Bangkok commandeered greater budgetary control, the primary vehicle for implementing policy in Phuket was the Phuket Provincial Administration Organisation (PPAO, or OrBorJor). At that time, the PPAO was under the leadership of Phummisak Hongsyok representing the local chapter of the “Young Turks” party. But since then, the PPAO withered. It became so overcome with “problems” that even control over the contracts issued for providing lifeguard services at our tourist beaches was taken from them.

Only in the past year have Phuket residents finally been able to witness again what an effective OrBorJor can achieve. Since former Phuket MP Rewat Areerob took office as PPAO President in February last year the PPAO has incredibly active, rolling out project after project to help Phuket residents with food relief, job training initiatives, ensuring care for disabled and the elderly throughout the pandemic and even securing the purchase of Moderna vaccine doses (through the Thai Red Cross, not the national government). The list goes on.

A more empowered PPAO is what Phuket stands to gain from being designated a Special Administration Area.

The current role of the Governor, as a Bangkok-appointed official of the Ministry of Interior, is to ensure central government policy is implemented across the island. Officially, that’s the job. The rest is just extra, including appeasing mobs and keeping up appearances.

With an elected governor, at the very least Phuket would have someone at the top who would not have remain silent when Bangkok is making the decisions for him. Phuket does not need another Bangkok lackey, we have plenty of those already.