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UPI Asia online
15 April 2008

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When does tea money turn to ex

Thailand, Many have argued legitimately that the Thai police are extremely corrupt. Even Thais themselves will accept this postulation, yet like others fail to note that the police force in Thailand is not a separate entity from the rest of society. People make up police staff, and it is the people themselves who enter the police forces of Thailand and help it gain a corrupt image through their own corrupt practices.
People do not suddenly change from non-corrupt to corrupt once they become police officers. How "acceptable" this kind of corruption is and how it is viewed by Thai society can be seen from a real-life anecdote that occurred recently in a resort city south of Bangkok.

A policeman had been extorting money from a Westerner married to a local Thai woman. The woman had been married to a Thai previously and had a young child she was raising from the previous marriage. To help out the woman, reportedly the foreigner had signed a legal document indicating that the child was his.

One thing led to another, the police got into the act and suddenly the foreigner found himself paying a police officer a little here and a little there to keep secret the fact that he had forged a legal document in Thailand. But the policeman grew greedy and began asking for considerable amounts that were no longer viable to pay. A friend of the foreigner called us to ask for advice.

Here's what we told him: "Your friend should go to the concerned police station and ask to speak both with the officer and his supervisor. Don't be too aggressive or insulting, or in any way accuse the policeman of anything that he may feel shame for. Instead explain fully what happened regarding the falsification of the document to the policeman's supervisor. It may help to explain that you thought you were doing the right thing. Explain diplomatically that the police officer had agreed to help with the case earlier and that he had been given certain amounts of money to cover his expenses in helping process legal matters so that the foreigner would not be punished too severely and that he could continue to help his Thai wife and the child."

The strategy behind the advice included guidance from a local Thai involved with police and the media that such extortion was a common thing and that anyone facing extortion need not feel as if there were no exit strategy.

The fact that the Thai providing the advice readily accepted police extortion as par for the course reflects not just values within the police but within society -- almost everyone expects something from everyone else. In dealing with corrupt officials there are corresponding responses based on who is involved, what is involved, and what degree of involvement in wrongdoing there is -- or appears to be -- on the part of the person subject to extortion.

In their book "Corruption and Democracy in Thailand," Pasuk Phongpaichit and Sungsidh Piriyarangsan outline six categories of "extra payments" to officials or those dealing with public offices. Understanding the categories will provide further insight into Thai society's approach to wrongdoing and how to deal with it.

The authors mentioned five categories of "least severe" payments to public officials: sin nam jai (gift of goodwill, or gift to award someone for being nice enough to accommodate the task at hand), kha nam ron nam cha (tea money, or money to buy a cup of coffee), praphuet mi chob (improper behavior -- an all-out departure, and an intentional one, from what should be done to what should not be done), sin bon, rit thai (this is extortion or bribery, such as that in the anecdote cited earlier).

The last least severe arrangement was called thudjarit to nathi (dishonesty, which is illustrated by the Thai police officer asking for extortion money.) The last category, called the most severe by the authors, was kan khorrapchan (corruption). The fact that all the other categories are corruption is a topic of debate in Thailand.

In our own dealings with officials, we have sometimes provided sin nam jai, or a gift of goodwill. An example was when a senior local administration official presided over our son's wedding and signed the actual marriage certificate; we provided him a cash gift. He had been invited to the wedding, of course, and had earlier agreed to sign the certificate. But he had not asked for any payment nor had we indicated he would receive one. But now that he had come to our home where the wedding took place we owed him the courtesy of helping offset expenses he had in coming on the one hand and in going through the extra trouble of coming on a Sunday.

In Thailand there is such a large overlap between legitimate payments and illegitimate payments to officials that it is often a matter of who is making the determination when deciding whether something is really dishonest or whether it's just the way business is conducted. In the case of the extorting policeman cited above, that overlap had been exceeded and it was time to get things "tweaked" properly before anything serious occurred.

This "tweaking" is a continual process taking place in every society, every nation in one manner or another. In Thailand "tweaking" also needs to be done from time to time when one of those making up the ruling elite -- the monarchy, the military or police, political or business leaders, academics -- actually does or is perceived to exceed its traditional mandate. This is the reason why Thailand has so many coups.

To maintain stability -- called national security by armed elements but just as correctly called the status quo -- an existing government is overthrown with the consensus of the other elements of the elite. In the case of the Sept. 19, 2006 coup against Thai Rak Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, the rest of the elite felt that Thaksin had gone too far and needed to have his wrist slapped. As well, democracy activists were threatening to upset the apple cart by themselves possibly forming a new government.

As with the violent Oct. 6, 1976 massacre of democracy activists, this time 30 years later the country's elite also did not want to try democracy. Events subsequent to Thailand's latest coup have revealed that fear of change, and not the need for democracy, triggered the military takeover. As strongly as King Bhumibol Adulyadej's chief Privy Council member General Prem Tinsulanonda denies complicity, his opponents in the Thaksin camp make contradicting allegations

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UPI Asia online15 April 2008

When does tea money turn to ex

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UPI Asia online
15 April 2008