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.

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.

Special zone Mae Sot still on track

Today "The Nation" had an article with an update on the creation of the special administrative zone in Mae Sot, started by the previous government but not yet finally approved in the legislation process. But according to the article, chances are quite good that the new government will also support the change and it will become reality in the not too far future.

Municipal bureaucrats expect implementation of a special administration zone at Mae Sot to help restructure taxes so they contribute more to public services and oversight of migrant workers.
They hope the change - backed by major political parties in the capital but yet to be approved - will boost the business revenue in the area from Bt2030 billion to Bt100 billion, and help turn Mae Sot into a model city.
[...]
"Currently, government policies are uncoordinated and not unified," the mayor [Teardkiat Shinsoranan of Mae Sot] said.
"Municipal and provincial officials all think and act on their own, with their limited budget," he complained.
As a result, no one was able to handle bigger problems that required bigger budgets and regional coordination.
[...]
Technically, two special zones are proposed - a Special Local Administrative Zone and a Special Economic Zone.
[...]
Mae Sot municipality's website notes that the House of Representatives last met on April 4, to read and correct details in a draft law in create these bodies. Involved parties are now waiting for the new government to finalise the bill.
"Both Thaksin and Abhisit's governments agreed to this project," said Chaiwat, who hoped that Yingluck's administration would also support it.
Next economic boom site?, The Nation, 2011-08-15

Chiang Mai Maha Nakhon

Alerted by Khun Wisarut in the 2bangkok forum, I became aware of a draft law which would convert Chiang Mai province into a special administrative area similar to Bangkok. I have found the full text and a summary of the main points at the iLaw website. I am trying to summarize these even further to the main points from my perspective.

• Section 6: Chiang Mai Maha Nakhon (เชียงใหม่มหานคร) is a local administrative unit.
  
• Section 8: The districts (Amphoe) are to be converted into urban districts (Khet), the subdistricts (Tambon) into urban subdistricts (Khwaeng).
  
• Sections 10,11,28: The citizen elect a city council, with the councilors elected in constituencies, each having about 100,000 citizen. Council works as legislating body as well as to check performance of governor.
  
• Section 43: The citizen elect a governor.
  
• Section 70: Each of the district has an elected district council with at least seven councilors.
  
• Section 113, 127: The PAO and the municipalities are dissolved
  
• Village and subdistrict headmen and subdistrict doctors stay in office, but report to the district officer or governor instead to the central government.
  

As iLaw is a non-government site where everybody can suggest new legislation, it is far from sure that this draft law will get adopted into the official legislative procedure, especially as there were other planned special administrative areas in discussion by the past government. It depends a lot on what policies the new government has in mind for the decentralization.

Hua Hin and Cha-Am to become a special administrative area

Cha-Am municipality office

While the law to make Mae Sot a special administrative area is apparently still in the drafting process, in the next meeting of the cabinet on February 8 another special administrative area will be discussed. The touristic centers of Hua Hin and Cha-Am are to be merged into one such unit to allow a better management of the area.

Whereas the article at The Nation can be understood that the two districts might become something like a new province

Interior Minister Chaovarat Chanweerakul will next Tuesday seek Cabinet approval to merge the two districts and put them under a special administration scheme. Hua Hin, where the Klai Kangwon Palace is located, currently comes under the jurisdiction of Prachuap Khiri Khan province, while Cha-am is in Phetchaburi province.

Hua Hin municipality office

the Thai language articles are more detailed but not about the administrative details. But at least the use the term "องค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ", thus it sounds like a similar structure with Mae Sot and the already existing special administrative area of Pattaya. I only hope the transcript of the cabinet meeting will have some more details, as one thing special about this one is the fact that it would be the first local government unit spread between two provinces. So one question is whether only the two municipalities Cha-Am and Hua Hin will be merged, or the whole districts as The Nation claims. Or is it maybe even a kind of resurrection of the province plan started in the last weeks before Thaksin was ousted in the 2006 coup, and the new entity will be a copy of the special administrative area of Bangkok, which is both a local administration as well as at province level?

Special administrative area Mae Sot approved by cabinet

Wondering if the new municipal council of Mae Sot has been finally been elected after the upgrade of the municipality in January, I found a news article which tells that the drawing of the constituency boundaries is still not finished, and therefore the election has been delayed for 45 days a fourth time already. The delay was partially due to the provincial Election Commission having to adjust the constituencies in Tak province for the next general election first.

However, the most interesting point comes at the end of the article. It states that although the special administrative area Mae Sot has been approved by cabinet already, the municipal election has to take place now and cannot wait until the law to established this new administrative unit has been approved by parliament and set into effect.

As there was apparently no mention of this in the English language press except an article of the Public Relations Department, I almost missed that this special administrative unit is already a draft law, unlike for Ko Samui where there was still discussion on the details last month. Via another news article I could then find the actual cabinet meeting transcript. The special administrative area (องค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ) Mae Sot was point one of the agenda of the June 22 meeting, and the main points of the forthcoming law are listed in there.

The new entity is to be named Nakhon Mae Sot (นครแม่สอด), and will be created by merging the current city municipality Mae Sot (เทศบาลนครแม่สอด) and subdistrict municipality Tha Sai Luat (เทศบาลตำบลท่าสายลวด). Though there are no details, it seems to me that similar to the special administrative areas Bangkok and Pattaya the new entity will take over parts of the provincial administration as well, as well as receiving a higher amount of the tax revenue collected in the city. The administration will consist of an elected council and mayor, as well as an advisory board. The city will not be completely independent, but still is supervised by the Ministry of Interior, who has the power to ask the mayor to clarify issues on the city performance.

Special administrative area for Ko Samui?

An article in the newspaper Samui Express made me notice that the plans for special administrative areas is still in the discussion. Last time I heard about it was in December, when it was just a side-note that both Mae Sot and Ko Samui are set to become a special kind of municipality. Sadly the article this time does not give much more background either.

WHILE Koh Samui has been unsuccessful in its bid to become a city, it is on its way to becoming, at least, a special district, a status that could in turn lead to the attainment ofits ultimate goal of, well, cityhood. Recently Samui Mayor Ramnet Jaikwang welcomed to Samui members of a Special Development Subcommittee involved with the task of conducting public hearings to get people’s opinions on the establishment of Samui asa special district.
[...]
Koh Samui has been chosen as the pilot area for the administrationof special districts.

A little bit more could be found at the Thai local website nathoncity.com, which not only had a report on this meeting, but much more interesting an article with some background on special administrative areas. I'll write up the details from that article in a separate post soon.

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.

More special administrative areas?

Just on Friday I mentioned an old clipping on a planned special administrative area for Laem Chabang, I found the one below at thephuketinsider posted on last Friday as well.

News out of the nation's capitol has the island of Koh Samui and Mae Sot in Tak Province as lead contenders for upgrades to Special Administration Zones. Currently in Thailand only Bangkok and Pattaya fall under this sector. One of the key benefits of falling into this category is the ability to elect senior local Government officials rather then appointments that are routinely rotated throughout the various provinces of the country.

While there seems to be some confusion caused by the fact that the two cities Pattaya and Bangkok are both called "special administrative areas", the administrative structure is totally different - Pattaya is merely a special kind of municipality, while Bangkok is both a province and a municipality. Since I already knew that a special administrative area modeled after Pattaya was discussed for Mae Sot before, this is probably not about new province-like entities similar to Bangkok.

I found one additional article in Thai already dating from September mentioning both Mae Sot and Ko Samui, naming the new administration "เมืองพิเศษ" (Mueang Phiset, special town) - yet in another government press statement from October Mae Sot is named "เขตเศรษฐกิจพิเศษ", meaning just "special economic zone", which not necessarily includes administrative changes.

What surprises me is the fact that Ko Samui is proposed to be changed as well. Just one and a half year ago Ko Samui was upgraded from subdistrict municipality to town municipality, and even at first planned to become a city municipality. But anyway, it will be interesting to see what will happen with these two, whether the government will make separate style of special administrative areas for these two, or will extend and generalize the Mueang Pattaya act to these two areas instead.

Laem Chabang as another special administrative area?

Another gem from the old news reports of the National News Bureau of Thailand. According to this one from  June 2004 the area of Laem Chabang was planned to become another special administrative area same as nearby Pattaya.

While Pattaya was made a special administrative area in 1978 in order to make the administration more able to cope with problems from the strong growth of tourism in the town, Laem Chabang is an industrial center and especially the main port of Thailand. However, this proposal obviously wasn't successful, but I haven't seen any report on why it was dropped or at least postponed.

Laem Chabang thus still is a subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลแหลมฉบัง), and is somewhat special is it one of the very few municipalities which cover area from more than one district. It covers parts of subdistrict Bang Lamung in Bang Lamung district, and of Si Racha district the complete subdistricts Bueng, Sura Sak, Thung Su Khla and parts of Nong Kham. And despite the fact that it already has a high enough population and probably also enough tax income, it is still at the lowest municipality level.

Special administrative area for the Muslim provinces

Last week the special administrative zone for the troubled southern Muslim provinces made another resurfacing. The last time it was suggested in beginning of 2008 it was quickly shelved again since it was only the interior minister thinking aloud without clearing with prime minister Samak beforehand.

Now prime minister Abhisit brought this proposal back into discussion, though that news article actually does not say what is meant by special administration. Only a self-rule is ruled out, something which is successfully done in Europe, for example in South Tyrol, the part of northern Italy with a German language majority. There are some parallels with the history of the Pattani area - the area came to Italy despite stronger ties with neighboring Austria, there also was a strong nationalistic trying to suppress the German heritage, followed by separatism terrorism, and since the regional autonomy in 1971 the area became quiet. But of course such a regional autonomy is halfway to a full secession, something no Thai politician could accept, remember the ongoing Preah Vihar issue on just a few square kilometer.

Sanitsuda Ekachai, Assistant Editor at the Bangkok Post, wrote in her opinion column The South: Consult the locals first that it is most important to consult the people in the troubled provinces first before creating yet another new scheme to solve the problems from far-away Bangkok. I'd think for most of the Muslim the important thing is to have their culture respected - things like the suppression of the native Jawi language is something which must be stopped for sure. But this is nothing which depends on the administrative structure, so maybe elected provincial governors are something which could be meant by the proposal.

Special administration area of Pattaya

Pattaya is an administrative entity unique in Thailand, though similar with the normal municipalities (Thesaban) its actual local administration is covered by a special law. This includes an elected mayor since the creation of the special area in 1978, something only adopted to the municipalities with the revision of the Thesaban act in 2000. I haven't yet found a good list of the further differences between the two administration systems.

In a 1998 issue of the Pattaya Mail it has the following short news.

In a very short time, Pattaya will become a self-governing 'Thesaban Nakorn', or city. This is due to the failure experienced during Pattaya's 20 years as a 'special city'. The government has seen fit to 'move backward' and make Pattaya a 'Thesaban Nakorn' to which Thai people are accustomed.

Apparently this change of the city status was not done, as still today it has its special status. It is a pity there are no further details on this plan in that article, especially interesting to know why it was skipped.

Planned new provinces - Mae Sot

Out of the several provinces which are apparently planned, only Mae Sot make it into the English language press so far - even though The Irrawaddy in their article from June 2007 only mentions half of the plans for the Mae Sot, the upgraded municipality.

The plan, at least as of June 2007, is to create new province named Mae Sot covering the five districts of Tak province which border to Myanmar (Burma) - from north to south these are the districts Tha Song Yang, Mae Ramat, Mae Sot, Phop Phra and Umphang, as depicted in the map. For a better administration, also the creation of three minor districts has been suggested, Ruam Rat Khiri (กิ่งอำเภอรวมราษฎร์คีรี) from Phop Phra, Mongkhon Khiri (กิ่งอำเภอมงคลคีรี) from Mae Sot and Haeng Mai Laeo (กิ่งอำเภอแห่งใหม่แล้ว) from Tha Song Yang. But as all three minor districts aren't named after a subdistrict and the source does not mention it, I cannot say which part of the districts will be split off.

Additionally, the town Mae Sot as the main border crossing to Myanmar is supposed to become a metropolis (มหานคร), which is supposed to be a special administrative area similar to Bangkok and Pattaya, so outside the normal municipal (thesaban) system. But what the differences between this metropolis and a thesaban nakhon are suppose to be - I have no idea. Anyway, this metropolis is planned to cover the subdistricts Mae Sot, Mae Pa and Tha Sai Luat of Mae Sot district. The current town of Mae Sot (เทศบาลเมืองแม่สอด) covers only the subdistrict Mae Sot.

All the above is from an article in Thai newspaper The Manager from May 22 2007. Just one thing the article does not mention - when will that new province become reality?