Last year's temple scandals should have been a wake-up call for the religious affairs authorities to fix an opaque system that breeds corruption. Instead, it carries on as if nothing had happened.
That complacency is evident in the Department of Religious Affairs' budget proposal for the next fiscal year. Despite a year that shattered public trust in temple governance, the proposal offers little sign of reform. It is simply business as usual.
The House budget committee was unimpressed. After a series of headline-grabbing scandals involving influential monks and temple finances, one would expect to see new safeguards to ensure good governance in the use of taxpayers' money.
More than 70% of the 333-million-baht budget is earmarked for subsidies channelled through temples and religious organisations. Yet there is no information on who receives the money, how recipients are selected, what safeguards exist once the money leaves government hands, and what reforms have been introduced since last year's scandals.
Officials insist the procedures comply with regulations and the accounts are clean. Such broad assurances expose bureaucratic inertia and fail to address taxpayers' concerns about transparency and efficiency.
The key question is what happens after state subsidies, temple donations, and temple assets come under the control of abbots, who are watching to prevent abuse?
The Wat Rai Khing scandal, in which the former abbot was convicted of embezzling hundreds of millions of baht in temple funds, showed how easy it is to abuse temple money when one person controls the purse strings.
Money is not the only thing at risk.
At Bangkok's Wat Kalayanamit, one of the country's wealthiest temples, cultural artifacts were destroyed, and longtime residents leasing temple land were evicted. When an abbot's power goes unchecked, the damage can extend far beyond temple finances. It can destroy cultural heritage and people's livelihoods.
Wat Kalayanamit is not an isolated case. Across the country, countless ancient prayer halls, mural paintings, and palm-leaf manuscripts containing invaluable knowledge have been destroyed on the orders of abbots. Yet they have rarely been held accountable.
All these incidents point to the same flaw: too much power in one pair of hands and too little independent oversight.
The department could have seized this year's budget as an opportunity to begin restoring public confidence. It could have proposed a nationwide inventory of temple assets and landholdings, mandatory disclosure of temple income and donations, standardised accounting, independent audits, and greater public access to financial information.
Knowing what assets temples own, how much income they receive, and how donations are spent would make abuse more difficult. It would also protect the overwhelming majority of honest abbots by strengthening public confidence in their stewardship.
Transparency, however, is only the beginning. The deeper problem lies in the Sangha Act itself. It gives abbots sweeping power but fails to offer safeguards to make them use power responsibly. Lay communities whose donations sustain temples have virtually no role in monitoring how those resources are managed. Temple committees remain weak. External scrutiny is minimal.
This situation has made corruption not merely possible but predictable. Thailand has seen before how financial records alone cannot prevent abuse. The corruption scandals involving the National Office of Buddhism and several top abbots demonstrated that accounts can be manipulated. Good governance cannot depend solely on paperwork prepared by those being supervised.
The issue, therefore, is not religion. It is governance. Reform must begin with the Sangha Act. Buddhism teaches honesty, restraint, and accountability. Institutions entrusted with billions of baht with state budgets and public donations should reflect those same principles.
Last year's scandals gave authorities a rare opportunity to rebuild public trust through meaningful reform. Its budget proposal suggests that opportunity is slipping away. The next temple scandal will not simply be a failure of one abbot. It will be another failure of governance.
