Thursday, July 2, 2015

Removing officials

On June 25, the military junta announced the suspensions or transfer of 70 government officials for suspected corruption in their order 19/2015. The list contains both officials appointed by the Ministry of Interior and other ministries, as well as elected officials from the local government units, including some relatively well-known PAO chairmen. See for example the Phuket Gazette article on PAO chairman Phaibun Upatising. Out of the 70, the following are those posts which I am usually taking a closer look at.
  • 1 vice province governor (รองผู้ว่าราชการจังหวัด)
  • 7 PAO chairmen (นายกองค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัด)
  • 14 TAO mayor (นายกองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล), 3 deputy TAO mayor (รองนายกองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล)
  • 17 municipality mayors (นายกเทศมนตรี), 1 member of the municipal council (สมาชิกสภาเทศบาล)
  • 1 PAO clerk (ปลัดองค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัด), 1 TAO clerk (ปลัดองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล), 2 municipal clerks (ปลัดเทศบาล)
While I haven't yet translated the whole lost of these 47 officials into XML, I already noticed two cases where a TAO mayor was removed who had his 4 year term already finished, and thus in normal times would require a new local election. But since all local elections are suspending according to order 85 (and order 86 for Bangkok) of 2014. I am not sure if these are included because their term ended between the compilation of the list and the announcement, or now all elected local officials stay in office indefinitely - order 1/2015 allowed for the terms being extended, but the way I understood it was that any extension of term must be approved by higher authorities first.

In fact, this is already the second order under paragraph 44 removing officials, one month ago order 15/2015 removed 45 officials, that time most of them were appointed officials.
  • 1 province governor, 5 district officers
  • 13 TAO mayors, 1 deputy TAO mayor (though one of them was mislisted, and was in fact a municipal mayor)
  • 3 municipal mayors
  • 1 municipal clerk, 1 deputy municipal clerk

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