Ever wonder why so many Thais, particularly those in rural areas, want their children to pursue a career in government service -- be it as an army or police officer, a civil servant in a state agency, or even in a local administrative organisation -- despite the modest salaries compared with those offered by the private sector?
The preference for a public-service career among most rural inhabitants is deeply entrenched in their mindsets, inherited from their forefathers from the feudal era to the present day, to the extent there are several old sayings that capture it. One goes along these lines: "Ten merchants are not equal to a single noble."
Although the salaries are modest and barely make ends meet for a beginner in government service, many Thais believe that, in the long run, government officials will be better off than their peers in the private sector on several counts -- healthcare benefits for themselves, their families and their parents, and career stability.
The unscrupulous ones, of course, will also think of ill-gotten financial gains through corruption, which has become a norm rather than an exception in most, if not all, government agencies.
You name it: the Royal Thai Police, the prosecution service, and the customs, excise, revenue, public works, land, national parks, public health and fisheries departments, universities and even temples. Nowhere in the bureaucracy is immune from corruption, although the severity of the problem may vary from place to place.
A few corrupt traffic police officers who are short of cash may gang up to set up a roadblock in broad daylight, or in the dead of night, to check the ID cards or driving licences of motorcyclists.
The chances are that they can comfortably make some quick money in an hour or two, then remove the roadblock before any complaint is lodged with their superiors.
A university lecturer with a PhD may earn an extra income by writing theses for students attending master's courses. Or a monk may hire a lecturer to write his thesis so he can advance to a higher position in the monastic hierarchy.
Hence it came as no surprise that, of about 400,000 people who sat the Department of Local Administration (DLA) recruitment exam last December for almost 7,000 vacancies at the department and its affiliated local administrative organisations, as many as 9,000 were willing to dig into their pockets, or to seek loans, to pay a minimum of 350,000 baht to corrupt officials in order to land jobs that promise 15,000 baht a month.
Some applicants were even willing to pay up to 800,000 baht for guaranteed senior positions. The total amount of money involved was estimated at about 4.5 billion baht, which is quite substantial.
About 10 DLA officials were caught last week during a raid by anti-corruption police and officials from the National Anti-Corruption Commission on a house in Nonthaburi province.
Around 800,000 exam answer sheets, along with several computers, were confiscated. The DLA chief has been removed from office pending the investigation. But many more are believed to be involved in this massive fraud, including politicians who are yet to be implicated, considering the huge amount of money involved.
How could a politician miss out on this big slice of the cake? Impossible.
What is interesting about this scandal is that the fraudsters were well organised, even though they were scattered across different provinces. One implicated suspect, who remains at large, was responsible for budget and strategic affairs in Wichien Buri district of Phetchabun.
A warehouse belonging to his company in Bang Yai district of Nonthaburi was used to change the exam scores and store the answer sheets. According to one online news outlet, citing a reliable source in the Central Investigation Bureau, a key suspect was responsible for collecting on a flash drive the exam results of those who had paid bribes. He is now the prime target of a police manhunt.
Nonetheless, this scandal is just the tip of the iceberg of a scourge that has infested the bureaucracy for time immemorial. And worse still, it is flourishing.
The patronage system in the bureaucracy has been blamed for promoting and perpetuating corruption, to the point that the system may never be abolished.
A newcomer to the service will gradually, and perhaps consciously, absorb the system into their mind from their seniors. Sooner rather than later, they will accept that corruption is normal and that everyone in the office does it, without any sense of guilt. Or they will become the black sheep and then leave the service.
China has its own harsh and decisive way of dealing with corrupt officials, including capital punishment. Several senior officials have been executed to set an example to the others. But corruption still prevails, albeit to a far lesser degree, because there are people who find the malpractice too irresistible and tempting not to partake in.
Will Thailand adopt the Chinese no-nonsense approach to rooting out corrupt officers? That is out of the question. As some cynics quip: "Most government agencies would be wiped out of their staff."
So we resort to the mai pen rai way of dealing with this scourge. Hence corruption has become institutionalised and accepted as a fait accompli by the public in general.
That is why most do not bother to protest or raise an objection upon witnessing traffic police officers pocketing some cash from a motorcyclist and the allowing him to go on his way with no further action taken after stopping him for not wearing a crash helmet.
Ask the 9,000 or so exam-sitters who paid bribes in order to get jobs at the DLA whether they feel ashamed or guilty for taking advantage of the others who did not pay. The likely answer is that, if they had not bribed, others would have paid the kickback money and got the positions anyway.
Fighting corruption in Thailand seems to be a futile effort, as all the mechanisms designed to do the job -- such as the NACC and the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission -- have been compromised.
That is why the people have formed the Anti-Corruption Organisation of Thailand. But without a law to give it authority, the organisation is merely a toothless tiger. Nevertheless, its faint voice is not completely drowned out.
While society as a whole seems to have thrown in the towel and retreated to the background, there are die-hards who refuse to back away. One of those who stands out is Warong Dechgitvigrom, the sole MP of the Thai Pakdee party, who is now trying to expose the irregularities in the Digital Economy and Society Ministry's 1.6-billion-baht TH-AI Passport project.
The public should not stay silent, but should say "No" loudly to corruption.
Another remedy that can help is for MPs to propose a bill making it mandatory for everyone who enters government service to declare their assets, and to do so every three to five years.
It will be too late for this requirement to apply to senior officials at the C-7 or C-8 level, because by then many of them may already have amassed a large amount of ill-gotten fortune.
Veera Prateepchaikul is a former editor, Bangkok Post.
