HomeAsia-Pacific Social Science Reviewvol. 15 no. 2 (2015)

Ethics of Thai Politicians

Wariya Chinwanno

 

Abstract:

It has been more than 10years that Thailand has been plagued by political crises, many of which resulted from the unethical behavior of politicians, namely, buying of votes, bribing, purchasing of positions, buying of members of parliament, intentional submission of false bank accounts, and so forth. In the 2010 academic conference convened by the Thai Senate, VichaMahakun, a member of the National Anti–Corruption Committee of Thailand (NACC) said that in the year 2003 there were 3,597 corruption cases which were sent to the NACC of which 2,933 were related to the politicians’ abuse of power, the omission of political responsibility, and the use of power to derive personal benefits. Of the cases relating to political malfeasance, 371 were related to the destruction of the environment, and 293 dealt with procurement, outsourcing, and hiring process.(Siamrath, Vol. 57, Week 15, 2010, 7-41) It can be seen from the data that most of the cases investigated by the NACC involved politicians.