Disaster politics in
Thailand By Steve Sciacchitano
and John Cole
Weather forecasters in
Thailand believe this coming rainy season could
cause a recurrence of last year's disastrous
flooding along the Chao Phraya River, which
deluged areas of the national capital and
surrounding industrialized provincial areas. The
Royal Thai Army (RTA) won widespread popular
approval for its flood relief efforts and in
recent months has been preparing for a possible
repeat scenario.
The RTA looked
comparatively competent vis-a-vis the response of
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's government
and civilian bureaucracy, which was widely
perceived as disorganized and tardy in managing
the flooding and delivering aid through its Flood
Relief Operations Command (FROC). Some analysts
predict that a repeat of last year's ineffectual
response to the flooding could
With
that scenario in sight, in March Yingluck ordered
the Minister of Defense, Retired Air Chief Marshal
Sukampon Suwannathat, to assume responsibility for
coordination of all flood relief activities during
the upcoming rainy season. Sukampon reportedly
turned to General Nipat Thonglek, a widely
respected officer who heads the Ministry of
Defense (MOD) permanent secretary's office of
strategy, to devise a plan to implement the
executive order.
Nipat and his
subordinates had already completed some of the
groundwork on their own initiative, and are known
to have identified the lack of an effective
coordinating flood relief center as a large part
of the problem. Nipat's plan calls for the
existing MOD operations center to be expanded to
include control and coordination of all government
disaster relief efforts. In addition to
controlling all government assets - both military
and civilian - involved in disaster relief, the
center will also coordinate all requests for
assistance.
The expanded MOD center will
also reportedly maintain communication with
provincial governors so that requests for
emergency assistance, including items such as
medical supplies, sandbags, food and clean water,
can be acted on immediately. Senior officials of
relevant ministries will be present in the center
and authorized to make quick decisions within
their competence, according to Nipat's plan.
Last year's effort saw several instances
where it took weeks to relieve incompetent or
absent officials; under the new center those
decisions can be made immediately.
Royal wrestling It is still
unclear, however, which agency will control the
distribution of royal family project aid for
future flood relief efforts. Since the inception
of royal projects in the early 1980s, the RTA has
always been in charge of implementing and managing
them across the kingdom. These include flood
relief projects funded by the royal family, which
were one of the mainstays in the RTA's successful
flood relief efforts during last year's disaster.
Now, the MOD is making a major push to
take over this royal function, at least as it
applies to flood relief programs. The RTA,
however, is pushing back hard to retain control
over the vital program.
The conflict is
indicative of the wider challenge Yingluck faces
in creating an effective inter-agency body in a
country where government ministries and agencies
are prone to rivalry and suspicion and often
function independent of one another.
"You
Americans are supposedly the world's experts in
managing the inter-agency process, but after two
wars since 9/11 you still in my opinion haven't
quite refined the overall process," said one
senior MOD staff officer.
"With that
observation in mind, just imagine the mountain we
Thai who are new to this process are attempting to
climb here in forming an inter-agency staffed
flood relief operations center in which 12
different Thai government civilian and military
agencies all feel that they are in charge of the
kingdom's water/flood control and disaster relief
management issues."
A second official, a
senior civilian from another ministry involved in
last year's flood relief effort, emphasized the
importance of a trained, professional staff for
the new MOD center.
"In our final analysis
of all the problems identified from last year's
failed flood relief effort, the central issue
which impeded the overall effort was a lack of a
trained inter-agency professional staff at the top
who could respond in timely fashion to requests
for assistance from the field," said the ministry
official.
"Instead, what we ended up with
was an ad hoc operation called the FROC at Don
Muang [airport] which was directed by the minister
of justice and manned by elected civilian
politicians who did not have a clue as to what was
required to successfully operate such a center."
The same official argued that the
country's most senior elected civilian leaders
needed to understand that there were many capable
Thai career civilian and military officials who
were both knowledgeable and experienced in flood
relief and disaster management and whose views
needed to be taken more seriously.
One
example of this lack of coordination was the
government's flawed decision to locate the FROC at
Don Muang airport, despite expert warnings that
the complex itself would soon be flooded. Those
warnings came to fruition and the disastrous
decision was later blamed on faulty information
provided to Yingluck by her personal advisors.
In addition, her government's surprise
decision to change 60 years of Thai policy and
prohibit any Thai official from requesting
assistance from a foreign government was a poorly
timed lurch towards nationalism in a time of
crisis. Many governments require such a request
before aid can be dispatched and the prohibition
last year arguably caused many problems that could
have been avoided. Last year's flooding-related
death toll was over 800, according to an official
announcement in late December.
Rival
leaderships Unspoken in the two senior
officials' comments is Yingluck's apparent desire
to seize control of flood relief from the RTA,
perceived by many as her government's major
political opponent. In 2011, the army was often
viewed as the government agency of last resort for
many Thais inundated and stranded by the flooding
disaster.
To some extent this was natural,
as armies are maintained and trained to act in
times of crisis, and have specialist heavy
equipment suited for such emergencies. But the RTA
by many assessments did more than fulfill its role
in an overall government relief plan and often
filled a void left by a lack of government
leadership and coordination. In the process, the
RTA reaped a substantial boost in its popular
approval.
The establishment of a new
MOD-led flood relief operations center is clearly
a step in the right policy direction, but to be
effective it will need strong leadership from both
the prime minister and her senior officials.
Efforts to recruit professional staff and
increased funding for the necessary communications
equipment are only first steps. Ensuring the
cooperation of all ministries involved will be
more difficult and could represent a make-or-break
test for Yingluck's leadership.
In a wider
political context, the struggle between the MOD
and RTA over administration of the royal family
project aid budget is symptomatic of the
underlying tension that continues between
Yingluck's government and the military top brass.
Last year's flooding disaster had the ironic
effect of temporarily reducing this tension, as
both sides needed to cooperate, and be perceived
as cooperating, in dealing with the natural
disaster.
At the time Yingluck stated that
army commander General Prayuth Chan-ocha could
remain in his post until his retirement in
September 2014. Almost half a year later,
Prayuth's future is less certain as mutual
distrust has returned and will likely be
aggravated further by any government moves to
reduce the RTA's political standing and future
role in disaster relief and management.
Steve Sciacchitano and John
Cole spent several years in Thailand while on
active duty with the US Army. Both were trained as
Foreign Area Officers specializing in Southeast
Asia and graduated from the Royal Thai Army's
Command and General Staff College. They are now
retired and the views expressed here are their
own.
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