According to Section 63 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560 (2017), the Thai government is obliged to raise awareness and educate people on the threats that come with corruption and malfeasance.
The government must also lay down effective and sufficient measures to prevent and eliminate those malpractices, as well as create a zero-tolerance-toward-corruption culture with a mechanism enabling the public to unite against corruption in all parts of society.
Since 2018, the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (ONACC), through the Bureau of Anti-Corruption Enhancement and Integrated Participation, has been implementing the STRONG project against corruption (aka STRONG), with the main purpose to foster a community immune to corruption.
Thus far, STRONG has significantly raised awareness of the danger of corruption to move toward a corruption-free society. Its campaigns strive to instil into communities a “Zero Tolerance” attitude toward corruption, never turning a blind eye to such malpractices, and thereby ensuring the cooperation to combat corruption from within.
Anti-corruption activities and campaigns under STRONG have given birth to concrete procedures such as Watch and Voice, tackling corruption risks, law violations, and conflicts of interest issues within local communities. Local corruption issues have since been better addressed and alleviated by those assistance measures.
What’s more, local reports of corruption have been compiled into a conclusive area, time, and target database, and translated into a cumulative analysis of corruption risks across the nation under the auspices of the Corruption Risk Mapping Project, another ongoing project initiated in 2020 by Office of the NACC in parallel with STRONG.
Nowadays, NACC headquarters and regional offices perform their preventive mission by integrating the Corruption Risk Mapping Project with other databases such as case statistics and analysis of Integrity and Transparency Assessment (ITA) reports. This collaboration constitutes classification and analysis of the corruption situation in each area, which can be further explored in terms of severity, duration, and involvement of other relevant organisations. Such integration enables preparation of significant information for forming effective anti-corruption policies at both local and national levels.
The aforementioned “TaC Team” policy (Together Against Corruption) was announced by Pol. Gen. Watcharapol Prasarnrajkit, NACC President, on the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day, 9 December 2020. By enhancing the database, all of the ONACC units can precisely tackle corruption according to issues shown and reported in the Corruption Risk Mapping, enabling more concrete outcomes and overall improvement.
“STRONG PROJECT’S FIELDWORKS”
TaC’s key to success in combating and reducing corruption has been restructured by the current Commissioners to enable flexibility of mission and function. Scope of corruption prevention is extensively set in accordance with the Organic Act on Anti Corruption B.E. 2561 (2018). Consequently, in order to coherently achieve the prevention mission, new internal units of the NACC were established as follows:
- Bureau of Proactive Measures and Innovations.
- Bureau of Anti-Corruption Education.
- Bureau of Anti-Corruption Enhancement and Integrated Participation.
- Bureau of Integrity and Transparency Assessment.
- Bureau of Conflict of Interest.
The new organisational structure accommodates NACC’s performance of duties. Its undertakings under the TaC Team campaign have also improved anti-corruption practices by increasing engagement across bureaus. For example, Bureau of Public Relations, Bureau of Investigation & Special Operations, and Bureau of Anti-Corruption Research & Academic Services have the mission to develop academic work so as to continuously improve effective work procedures for the prevention and suppression of corruption.
The restructure accommodates anti-corruption procedures design by analysing the data collected from the STRONG project across the country and case statistics provided by its provincial offices. The analysis showed that issues needing to be immediately addressed involve natural and public resources, particularly invasion of public land, forest, mountain, coastal area, and waterway, all of which are corruption risk issues mapped in all regions.
In 2021, the Office made significant progress against corruption concerning public and natural resources through pilot projects in 10 areas (one project per region, plus Bangkok). These projects take into account high risk and high consequence areas and ITA scores, along with a number of cases, and use this information to form new policy.
Moreover, in cooperation with other external organisations responsible for natural and public resources, the Office can be of assistance by providing “Guidelines for Raising Integrity & Transparency” reports for such agencies, especially local administrative organisations identified as agencies with the highest number of complaints and the lowest ITA scores according to the 2019-2020 database.
TaC Team against Corruption therefore serves the purpose of integration within and outside the Office, aiming at full capability of the anti-corruption network in every sector: firstly, through the STRONG network, developed and enhanced as key to overseeing corruption; secondly, through the restructured Office of the NACC with greater preventive capacity through performance of its duties and powers; and thirdly, through the participation of state agencies at both central and regional levels. Integrated participation of all sectors of society will lead to more complete achievement of anti-corruption goals.