Galyani Vadhana district officially created

The 878th district of Thailand and 25th district of Chiang Mai is now officially created. Published in the Royal Gazette on December 25 was the decree titled พระราชกฤษฎีกาตั้งอำเภอกัลยาณิวัฒนา จังหวัดเชียงใหม่ พ.ศ. ๒๕๕๒. The decree is divided into 5 sections.

• Section 1 just states that the decree is named "Decree on the creation of Galyani Vadhana district, Chiang Mai province, B.E. 2552"
• Section 2 states that the decree takes effect the day following its publication in the Royal Gazette.
• Section 3 states that the three subdistricts Chaem Luang, Ban Chan and Mae Daet are split off from Mae Chaem district and form the district Galyani Vadhana
• Section 4 states that the district office is to be located in Chaem Luang subdistrict, and is under the jurisdiction of Chiang Mai province.
• Section 5 states that the Minister of Interior to act in accordance with this Royal Decree.

Administrative offices of Phetchaburi

This year I happened to stop over in Phetchaburi two times, and used the time to collect photos of the administrative offices. Which was rather easy as they are all located close to each other on Ratchawithi road, and easy to find as on Phetkasem from bangkok it's just driving straight on instead of taking the turn to the south next to Khao Wang.

When driving that way, the first place to see is the city pillar shrine (Lak Mueang), a small shrine located in a nice park with the wooden pillar covered by gold in the center. And as it has a pond within the park, one can of course by food to feed the fish inside. And also as usual with such attractions, it has several souvenir carts as well as small eateries at the parking lot.

The actual offices are located 500 meter further down the street. Starting on the northern side, it has the district office (ที่ว่าการอำเภอ) of Mueang Phetchaburi district first. As there are a few additional buildings between the office and the street I could not get the standard view of the whole office this time - and now I look at the building in Google Earth again I think I have been on the backside only and thus missed the better view on the other side - so I have to return there to check next time.

A few buildings further down the street comes the municipality office (สำนักงานเทศบาล) of the town (thesaban mueang) Phetchaburi (เทศบาลเมืองเพชรบุรี).

Now turning south to the other side of the road it has the province hall (ศาลากลางจังหวัด), the central administration for the whole province. I am not sure what were the two smaller buildings in between - maybe the PAO office is among them-, but then on the other end of the block opposite the district office it has the provincial court (ศาลจังหวัด).

View Phetchaburi administration in a larger map

New provincial courts

There are many more provincial courts than provinces in Thailand - a complete list seems to be found at tambol.com, however with expired links - and now yet another one has been created. Published in the Royal Gazette on December 18, a provincial court in Hot district was established, making it the third provincial court within Chiang Mai province.

• Chiang Mai (ศาลจังหวัดเชียงใหม่)
• Fang (ศาลจังหวัดฝาง)
• Hot (ศาลจังหวัดฮอด)

Additionally, there's the Juvenile and Family Court in Chiang Mai (ศาลเยาวชนและครอบครัวจังหวัดเชียงใหม่) - no weblink because the site is currently spreading malware.

And it seems Hot will not be only new provincial court to be established, as along with an announcement from May 2009 on the set up of a commission to draft the law, there was another commission dealing with the creation of the provincial court Phra Pradaeng (ศาลจังหวัดพระประแดง).

Amphoe Mueang naming scheme

In every province the district (Amphoe, อำเภอ) which contains the province hall is named same as the province, with the word Mueang (เมือง) added - with the exception of Ayutthaya province, where both the province and the district are named Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya (พระนครศรีอยุธยา). And of course Bangkok, which is not a province in the normal sense anyway. On the other hand, there are four districts which have that work in their name without being the capital district.

Now, these weren't the only exceptions, before the provinces Thonburi and Phra Nakhon were merged in 1972, the two capital district had no Mueang in the name either. To find more, one has to go much further into the history of this naming scheme. It was in fact adopted in 1938, with an announcement in the Royal Gazette renaming several districts. To be exact, 43 district became Mueang districts, whereas in 11 cases the word Mueang was stripped from districts which were not capital district. For example, the district Ban Don (อำเภอบ้านดอน) became Mueang Surat Thani (อำเภอเมืองสุราษฎร์ธานี), whereas Mueang Chaiya became simply Chaiya (อำเภอไชยา). Before 1938, the naming scheme was different - only those districts which date back to the provinces before the thesaphiban reforms 1892-1915 had a name with Mueang, and all other districts were named after the central subdistrict (Tambon).

Since 1938, all newly established provinces had their central district renamed accordingly, also for those provinces temporarily abolished in 1943 the Mueang was removed. There are however two further exceptions, of the four provinces annexed during World War II both Lan Chang and Phibun Songkhram had no district named Mueang.

The four district which now have a name containing Mueang without being a capital district were all created relatively recently, when apparently the fixed naming scheme was not followed that strictly anymore. In detail these are Mueang Suang (1973), Mueang Pan (1981), Mueang Chan (1992) and Mueang Yang (1995).

Nakhon Pattani

The ISRA news site has a quite detailed analysis of the various proposals for a regional autonomy or a special administrative area for the three Muslim dominated provinces. It guess far beyond the vague proposal from Chavalit Yongchaiyudh earlier this year, and mentions concepts discussed in seminars at Chulalongkorn university in June and at Prince of Songkhla University earlier this month. Maybe the most important part of the article is the part where actual details on the suggested administrative structure are given

In essence, the proposed administrative model calls for the dissolution of all the existing provincial administrative organizations, the tambon administrative organizations and the municipalities on ground that they are duplicating one another and they have little access to the people.
Instead, it proposed the creation of three “nakhons” (cities) namely the Pattani City, Yala City and Narathiwat City, each with its own administrators to be elected by people in the three provinces. The three special zone cities will coordinate with the central government in Bangkok through the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, an independent body answerable to the prime minister.
Another model, to be called “Pattani Maha Nakhon” (Greater Pattani City) which combines the three southernmost provinces plus four districts of Songkhla together under one single administrative body, has also been floated. It was further reported that a law calling for the creation of this administrative model was being drafted by Akkacha Promsoot, a member of the Political Development Assembly

Thus the first proposal is very similar to the administrative structure in Bangkok, which is well-established there, and should not pose that much legal difficulties to create it in other parts of the country as well.

The Asia Foundation survey I mentioned yesterday already suggests that further steps to decentralization are rather popular - 75% prefer to elect the provincial governor instead of having them appointed by the Ministry of Interior, 69% say more decentralization is better than keeping the current system, and even a slight majority of 48% say that further decentralization or limited autonomy can help to ease the conflict in the deep south.

However given the current political situation in Thailand with the two factions in so deep political battles I don't see any chance for steps towards more decentralization - that would give more power to the local population away from the elites and central government.

Corruption at the local government

Found in yesterday's Bangkok Post "Local officials top graft list"

Local administrative organisations top the list of state agencies embezzling public funds allocated for procurement and development schemes, a government report says.
The report, by the Office of the Permanent Secretary under the PM's Office, looked into alleged irregularities in the use of state budgets for the 2009 fiscal year, which ended Sept 30.
[...]
The office was able to conclude its investigations into 67 cases and retrieve 17 million baht. Thirty-three staff were dismissed and 30 had their salaries cut. About 40 cases have gone to the public prosecutors and the courts.

This fits with the survey published by the US-based NGO Asia Foundation in September on the opinions of Thai people to many questions regarding the constitution, the state of democracy and quality of administration. The full report is published as a 117 page PDF which can be freely downloaded. Question 12.5 targets the corruptions in local administration, which however includes both the local government as well as the local officials of the central government.

Some people say that it is often necessary to pay bribes to civil servants if you need something from the government, such as papers, permits, or documents. Others say that this is not true and that the civil servants are
honest. Which view is closer to your own? (Q77)

48% of the answers said yes, bribery is necessary, another 48% said no, and 3% had no opinion. And when asked about personal experience with bribery in the past 5 years, 26% confirmed that they at least personally know someone who had to pay bribes. The authors of the study aren't sure whether the fact that only have of those thinking that bribery is wide-spread actually have direct knowledge is due to a lower than perceived number of corrupt officials or simply due to the fact that many did not have to contact authorities recently.

Bangkok birthday celebrations

Bangkok's Birthday Party
Originally uploaded by Ian Fuller

Bangkok is celebrating its 38th birthday in this week. Anyone wondering now that the city was around way longer - you are of course right, the city was founded in 1782, when the first king of the Chakri dynasty moved the capital to its current position. So the town is 227 years old, but what was started 38 years ago is the current administrative structure of Bangkok. In December 1971 the revolutionary decrees merging the province and municipalities of Phra Nakhon and Thonburi into a single province Krung Thep were issued by the coup group around Thanom Kittikachorn. Finally on December 13 1972 the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) was established, the entity which is now celebrating.

The actual decrees were the following

• Revolutionary decree 24, December 21 1971 - merge of the provinces Phra Nakhon and Thonburi to the province Nakhon Krung Thep Thonburi (นครหลวงกรุงเทพธนบุรี). This includes the merger of the Provincial Administrative Organizations to one new one named องค์การบริหารนครหลวงกรุงเทพธนบุรี.
• Revolutionary decree 25, December 21 1971 - merge of the municipalities Krung Thep and Thonburi to the city Luang (เทศบาลนครหลวง).
• Revolutionary decree 335, December 13 1972 - establishing of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (เทศบาลนครหลวง). This includes many smaller changes, like the abolishing of the muncipality, the PAO and the 11 sanitary district; also the district were renamed from Amphoe to Khet, and all of the new posts were defined.

Given the dates, the celebrations must refer to the last decree, but then it would be the 37th anniversary. Or maybe they celebrate the begin of the 38th year of the existence of BMA, which has begun on the first day of celebrations on December 14.

It was BKK Photographer who made me notice the celebrations on this anniversary, which however seem to be rather quiet, with some booths set up on the plaza in front the administration building next to the Giant Swing. For some photos see his set of flickr.