Mae Sot administration act approved by cabinet

In the cabinet meeting on February 22, the draft of the Mae Sot special administrative area was discussed. The main extract from the meeting transcript is

คณะรัฐมนตรีเห็นชอบร่างพระราชบัญญัติระเบียบบริหารราชการนครแม่สอด พ.ศ. .... ที่สำนักงานคณะกรรมการกฤษฎีกาตรวจพิจารณาแล้ว ตามที่สำนักงานปลัดสำนักนายกรัฐมนตรีเสนอ และให้ส่งคณะกรรมการประสานงานสภาผู้แทนราษฎรพิจารณา ก่อนเสนอสภาผู้แทนราษฎรพิจารณาต่อไป

The cabinet approved the draft of the Mae Sot administration act. It was already checked at the Council of State. The office of the permanent secretary proposes to send it to the coordination committee of the House of Representatives before submitting it to the House of Representatives for consideration.

I had found the full words of the draft act at the website of Mae Sot municipality already, though I am not sure if it is exactly the same version as the one now approved by the cabinet. It seems the act is closely resembling the Pattaya administration act of 1999, though due to its length I haven't been able to check this thoroughly.

And it seems also the second change for the Mae Sot area is still on track, as in January already the Mae Sot special economic area was mentioned in a news report by the Public Relations Department. And even the creation of new province around Mae Sot isn't shelved it, as there are still lots of mentions of "จังหวัดที่ 78" or "จังหวัดแม่สอด" lately, like this one reporting that the mayor of Mae Sot paid homage at a local King Naresuan shrine to speed up the creation of all these three administrative changes.

Phuket PAO chairmen early election

Last week, Paiboon Upattising (ไพบูลย์ อุปัติศฤงค์), chairman of the Phuket Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO, องค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัดภูเก็ต) sent a letter of resignation to the province governor. The interesting part is that actually his term in office would have ended in April this year anyway, and he announced that he will run for re-election, so in effect this will separate the chairman election from the PAO council election, as now a new chairman election has to be held within 60 days. The reasons he gave according to Phuket Gazette are

Mr Paiboon added that he preferred the OrBorJor elections to be held early because he foresees delays in holding the elections.
“There are problems with the constituency boundaries because of the imbalance in the increasing number of people in each voting district. The boundaries must be changed to redress this problem before the election can be held, and I have heard of no progress about this,” he said.

So far, no announcement on the PAO constituencies in any of the provinces has been published in the Royal Gazette, except for Buriram which has its election some months earlier than the others anyway. Since the constituencies are only necessary for the council, an election for the chairman can be held without any redefinition of constituencies.

Mr Paiboon cited problems in redrawing constituency boundaries as causing delays in holding elections in both the Rawai and Chalong municipalities.
“They have not had mayors for more than six months. This is causing a lot of problems, and all because of problems in redrawing the constituency boundaries.
“Many important decisions have not been made because the position of the mayor [in Rawai and Chalong] is empty. Election dates have not even been set.” he added.

At least for Chalong, just yesterday the constituencies were announced, with the announcement signed on February 8. Thus now at least for Chalong the municipal election can be finally be held.

It is a bit surprising that due to a slow drawing of constituencies elections can be postponed for many months. Whereas Chalong was just recently upgraded from being a TAO and if the Election Commission wasn't notified in time this could be an explanation for the delay, in case of Rawai there were municipal constituencies defined in 2007 already and it was beforehand known that the four year term will end in 2011 and the constituencies need to be checked at that time.

Anyway, now there will be two elections for the PAO in Phuket this year, and for sure the some expats and tourists especially in Patong will complain bitterly about the two sober weekends - to prevent the voters from going to the ballot intoxicated no alcohol will be on sale in shops and bars all weekend.

Three more province governors appointed

Only by chance I checked the transcript of yesterdays cabinet meeting as the agenda included a topic "การแต่งตั้งข้าราชการให้ดำรงตำแหน่งประเภทบริหารระดับสูง (กระทรวงมหาดไทย)" - Appointment of senior officials (Ministry of Interior). And to my surprise, I found that it were three more province governors which were appointed, I didn't realize that with the previous list of appointments there were still provinces left without a new governor.

1. Surachai Sisankham (นายสุรชัย ศรีสารคาม), deputy governor of Nakhon Yaok becomes governor of Nakhon Nayok.
2. Suriya Prasatbanthit (นายสุริยะ ประสาทบัณฑิตย์), deputy governor of Pathum Thani becomes governor of Tak
3. Chitra Phrahomchutina (นางสาวจิตรา พรหมชุติมา), deputy governor of Prachinburi becomes governor of Prachinburi

As the third new governor is female, there are now two female province governors, not sure if this isn't even already a new record number - the first ever female province governor was assigned in 1993, and there were only few further female governors after that. The Thai administration is still very much male-dominated.

Bueng Kan province hall

Khun Wisarut at the 2bangkok forum has found an update on the Bueng Kan province hall, including several sketches of the proposed building originally posted at lockerz. While the building itself looks very similar to province halls in other provinces - four stories, a square building with a large open space in the interior, the main news is that the planned location of the province hall has changed. Originally, it was talked about building it near Non Sombun at highway 222, right next to the Bueng Kan campus of Udonthani Rajabhat University, but now it sounds like it will be located along highway 212 in Ban Tha Khrai (บ้านท่าไคร้), about 6 kilometer southeast of Bueng Kan town.

Thursday linkage

Buadhai has done a short visit to Surin, and photographed the city pillar shrine there. An interesting side-note is that

Most city pillars in Thailand are not that old and were built in provincial capitals to symbolize central power. This one was erected in 1974.

And quite fitting was his visit to Phimai on the return way, a nice comparison of the modern Khmer-style city pillar shrine, and the original (although reconstructed) Khmer buildings of Phimai.

Five year old municipal constituencies announced

Usually, acts and other announcements are published in the Royal Gazette relatively timely, most commonly about two months after it was signed and thus approved for publication. However, sometimes it takes significantly longer, and just today a new record was set within those announcements I am looking through. The constituencies for the subdistrict municipality Thung Sai (เทศบาลตำบลทุ่งทราย) in Kamphaeng Phet were announced today, however the publication was signed on October 16 2007 already. And the date is not simply mistyped, as the TAO Thung Sai was upgraded to a municipality effective August 29 2007, so the constituencies were defined shortly afterwards to be ready for the first municipal election. I have no idea why it was kept in the publication queue that long, but - if it will ever come - the announcement making the upgrade of Thung Sai official hasn't been published yet and will break the record then again.

Ko Tao district proposed

The Thai language news portal of the Department of Public Relations of the Thai government yesterday had an interesting short article, apparently a new district is about to be proposed. As it wasn't found in the English language section, nor have the English newspaper picked up the issue yet, I have to do the translation myself.

Surat Thani province prepares to propose to the cabinet to change administrative status of Ko Tao to District Ko Tao, in order to be more comfortable for the citizen, improve tourism and develop the area to be more effective.

Thirayut Iamtrakun (นายธีระยุทธ เอี่ยมตระกูล), province governor of Surat Thani, disclosed that in the roaming cabinet meeting in Southern Thailand to be held in Phuket in March 2012 the province will ask for approval by the cabinet to set up Ko Tao as a new district, to split from Ko Pha Ngan district. To enhance and support the strategy of the city of good people Surat Thani, including to make it easy for citizen in remote areas to travel to contact with government service conveniently. Additionally, to enhance tourism and develop the area to be more and more efficient.

Ko Tao is an area of about 21 square kilometer or 13,125 rai, mostly hills near the sea, 45 kilometer away from the district [office] Ko Pha Ngan. Divided into one subdistrict and three village and a population of 1706. Most moved there from Ko Pha Ngan and Ko Samui, to make a living in tourism and in services around tourism, as Ko Tao is an important tourist attraction, famous for diving in coral reefs.
[ThaiNews Network, 2012-02-05]

The rules to set up a district could allow the creation of a Ko Tao district (อำเภอเกาะเต่า), as tourism development is mentioned as a major exception from the minimum number of subdistrict.

However, with just 1700 citizen it will be a very small district - even smaller than the currently smallest district Ko Kut in Trat province, which has 2253 citizen in two subdistricts. Since the minor districts (King Amphoe) are no longer existing as a second level of districts, more appropriate for areas to small to get a full district but still have enough local problems to need more direct central administration, now the hurdle for a new second level administration is much higher than it was in past. It will be interesting to see what the cabinet will say about this proposal, so I will certainly pay close attention to the media reports on that Phuket meeting.

Subdistrict boundary adjustment in Thung Song

On Friday, an adjustment of the subdistrict boundaries within Thung Song district of Nakhon Si Thammarat was announced in the Royal Gazette. Within this announcement, already the 4th amendment of the original announcement from 1998 [Gazette], the boundaries of the two subdistricts Khao Khao (ตำบลเขาขาว) and Na Mai Phai (ตำบลนาไม้ไผ่) get defined.

To get an idea of what is the actual change with this announcement, I have translated all the MGRS coordinates within the current as well as the 1998 announcement into their normal coordinates and added them into the map displayed below. Interestingly, while doing so I spotted two coordinates of Khao Khao in the 1998 announcement which must be wrong - NJ568998 has been written as NK568998, and instead of NK611039 the announcement says NK911039, which would be 30 km east. Note that the areas drawn are not correct, as I have simply connected the points with lines, whereas in real they follow the natural boundary describe in the text.

View Larger Map Sadly, it is not that easy to recognize what has been changed, not only due to the fact that the amendment uses many more explicit points than the original announcement from 1998. The boundary between Khao Khao and Na Mai Phai hasn't been changed much, it more seems like a more clear definition of it. For Na Mai Phai, it seems some area at the east was added. Khao Khao seems to have been enlarged in its northern part. It's a pity I don't have any good map with Tambon boundaries, and the layer within Google Earth was removed some months ago.

Mayor of Wat Pradu killed

The Office of Provincial Election Commission of Suratthani had recently posted the local election calendar for this year - or to be more exact the dates when the terms of the local governments end, as the actual election date within 60 days after that day will be set only few weeks before the election. I could find several cases where I had the previous election date wrong in my XML because that news article where I found them must have been wrong; also notice that Ko Samui will see new municipal elections this autumn, so if there'd be any upgrade to a special administrative area now would be the best time, or wait another four years.

Former municipality office of Wat Pradu,
now a police station

But a small note within that table hides a news story not covered at all in the English press. It says "นายกฯเสียชีวิต 4 ม.ค. 55" - Mayor passed away January 4 2012. But it was a violent death, as Thongchai Phrikkaeo (นายธงชัย พริกแก้ว) he was shot while attending a funeral. If I am not misreading the news article I found, the assassin was caught already, but I haven't found anything yet with speculation on the reason for the killing. I wouldn't be surprised if it were around lucrative projects initiated by the municipality going to the wrong contractor...

It's not that political murder is unheard of in Thailand - quite the contrary - the scary thing is that this one happened in the municipality right next to where I am often during my vacations. And even though he was a municipality mayor, the case wasn't big enough to be covered in the English language press, the only similar cases I read about there are either those in the unruly provinces of the deep south, or when it is close to Bangkok or related with national elections, e.g. the killing of the PAO Chairman of Nakhon Sawan last summer.

I am currently reading the book "The better angels of our nature" by Stephen Pinker - very recommended despite having 700 pages - in which the author argues that the violence level has gone down significantly all over the world, and links this (among others) to the fact that more and more countries have stable, democratic governments with well-working law enforcement. Though I have no statistics on the homicides in Thailand, given news like this the country still has a long way to go - cannot recall any recent political murder in the West.

Patong special administrative area?

While the special administrative area of Mae Sot is still only in the discussion and - as far as I know - no draft law has been presented to the cabinet or parliament so far, and also some other areas which were in discussion to receive special status earlier haven't shown up in the news for quite some time, now yet another area has been added to the queue. Phuket Gazette reported yesterday that following a peaceful protest for longer opening times of the nightlife venues in Patong (เทศบาลเมืองป่าตอง) on Phuket island now led to the government picking up the issue.

Government Spokesman Prompong Nopparit, in Phuket on Saturday, pledged to take up the issue with Pheu Thai ministers at a meeting in Bangkok today. [...] “But all entertainment venues in Thailand are required to follow the law under the Ministry of Interior. I will raise this issue for discussion at the Pheu Thai Party meeting on Tuesday,” he said. “For the long term, Patong should apply to be a special administrative area for tourism, just like Pattaya. That will make it easier to manage all the local problems without going through the Ministry of Interior,” Mr Prompong added.

It sounds a bit strange to me that it is necessary to change the administrative status of an area to have to ability to override a national law, when it were (to my naive viewpoint) much easier to amend the law to allow local governments to issue exceptions. Since all of the local governments are under control by the Ministry of Interior, this could still deny the exception if they believe the local government has gone too far. But since it would be interesting to see the administrative status change I will definitely follow this case as well - and since there is an English language newspaper covering all the Phuket issues well it will be easy to stay up to date in this case.