Conflicts of interest are not only unjust, they create economic problems by distorting real market competition, hinder competition and slow economic growth to the detriment of the poor, a political scientist warned yesterday.

Withayakorn Chiangkoon, a political scientist at Rangsit University, said that despite serious repercussions from current conflicts of interest, many people still failed to fully understand the consequences.

"They know little about the problem," he said. Many people even thought conflicts of interest were acceptable as long as the public gets something from them also. He was speaking on the first day of a three-day Thai Politics Forum set up by King Prajadhipok's Institute.

Withayakorn said harsher penalties were needed for politicians unable to prove where they acquired their wealth - including jail terms and asset confiscation.

"Corruption is not about a natural urge [to cheat] ... but it can be prevented and suppressed. When we look at countries like Singapore and Hong Kong, they both faced corruption like Thailand in the past but they managed to solve it. If others can solve it we should be able to do so too," he said.

Withayakorn cited the Thaksin Shinawatra government's handling of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with countries like the United States, Australia and Japan as an example of what he believed constituted conflicts of interest.

"It's good for some businesses such as telecommunications, the auto industry, big agro businesses in which members of the cabinet mostly hold shares. But it's bad for middle and small scale farmers like cattle owners, onion, garlic and orchard farmers."

Duanden Nikhombarirak, a research director from Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), said while an FTA in itself may not be wrong in principle, the public doubted the government's impartiality because of perceived conflicts of interest.

"It leads to doubts about lack of transparency and distrust about the negotiation process itself," she said. Many thought certain businesses would benefit from their political links at the expense of others.

Duanden said the problem was so widespread that "every government policy could be linked to the interests of businesses owned by those in power".

She alleged many privatised state enterprises were now owned by proxies or "nominees" of politicians. "This is directly about conflict of interest."

She questioned if political will existed to crack down on corruption and conflict of interest. Hope lay not in top-down reform but bottom-up change initiated by the grassroots, non-government organisations (NGOs) and activists, she felt.

"We have to pay attention to the building of this network."

Caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came under attack when Chulalongkorn political science lecturer Pitaya Bovornwattana said the former telecommunications tycoon treated the country like it was "his firm".

"The coming to power of Thaksin ground to a halt the democratisation process and good governance. The country became a company, and [it was] his company. He could do whatever he wished and conflict of interest became the norm. The people [involved in it] even felt justified doing it. They said that as they had invested [in politics] they had the right to recover their investment," Pitaya said. "What we got was a business group taking over the country."

Pitaya said the public should question top politicians who became richer while they were in office and running the country.

A more sombre note was injected by Thaksin's former cabinet secretary Bowornsak Uwanno, who recently resigned and has just emerged from a period as a monk.

Bowornsak said what was needed to solve the political crisis was insightful research to find out the real cause of the conflict. "It's most urgent that there be research into what this crisis is about, what to reform and how to do it."

He said Thailand lacked quality political science research that would give an accurate view of politics; the amount and quality of research today was lacking.

Bowornsak suggested that questions into why Thaksin's populist policies were opposed by the middle-class or the impact of FTAs could be useful research topics.

 "If no detailed research is conducted it could affect us in ways we cannot imagine in the future," he said in reference to the  FTA issue.

Bowornsak said Thai political scientists were too content to rely on foreign research and this resulted in an inaccurate or even distorted grasp of Thai politics and political expectations.

Only 1,000 political science and legal researchers had been produced locally over the past seven decades, Bowornsak said, and that was totally inadequate in terms of number and quality.

Some important local research had also been greeted with silence, suggesting either the intellectual community agreed with the papers or people lacked the culture of criticism.

Bowornsak cited some recent research by King Prajadhipok's Institute as illuminating. Part of it found that supporters of the Democrat Party earned an average Bt15,355 a month more than those of other big parties, including the ruling Thai Rak Thai, who earned Bt9,000 or less.

"The supporters of Thai Rak Thai are [on average] the least educated too," he said.

Pravit Rojanaphruk

 The Nation