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การประชุมวิชาการ
สถาบันพระปกเกล้า ครั้งที่ 16 49

center and the localities and the people. Indonesia, under President Habibie, issued a
law in the year 1999, devolved the power from Jakarta down to the seventeen

thousand islands of Indonesia. And scholars have told us that because of that law,
under President Habibie, who took over from President Suharto, who was forced out
of office because of the financial crisis in 1997-1998. We were told that that law

saved Indonesia as a country. That law prevented Indonesia from becoming a
Yugoslavia of Asia. - “แปลว่าแตกกระสานซ่านเซ็น” That law prevented Indonesia from

being a Balkan of Southeast Asia. Devolved the power from the center out to the
people, out to the country, out to the peripheries, so that we can save the country.
The Philippines has done the same thing, even during the time of President Marcos.

He was forced in his interim constitution to pay lip service to decentralization, to give
room, to give space for the provinces to join the central government in the

development of the country instead. And Malaysia has a very complex system of
federalism because they have their Sultans, because they have their states, because
they have their state law, because they have their many layers of federalism in

Malaysia, but it is decentralized. My point is we will have to think about this issue
and I am glad it is one of this conference’s issues. This is a very, very crucial and

critical issue for Thailand today: decentralization. When governors are appointed from
Bangkok, when police chiefs appointed from Bangkok, district officers appointed from
Bangkok, judges appointed from Bangkok. Every position in the province appointed

from Bangkok. Military commanders appointed from Bangkok. You know what
happens? Those appointed officials will walk to the people, to the countryside, to the

regions with their back to the people and facing Bangkok. Why? Because Bangkok
appointed them. They will get promotion not from the people but from the boss in
Bangkok. And when you relocate officials from one province to the next, people have

no way of knowing what’s the record, what has he done. Has he been good all his
career? Or he has committed certain mistakes, corruption, but he has been relocated

to us as a punishment? People have no way to know. It has to be made transparent.
And better yet, let them have their own officials through their own local provincial
elections. We will have to think about that. Time has passed since Thailand could be

governed by this suffocating centralized bureaucracy. If we do not address this
problem, we are not going to get through this critical period of competition coming

our way in every direction. Thailand will have to measure up to the demand and the
pressure of competition [that will happen after we become ASEAN Community and
have to open up the country to deal with globalization because we are not going to

survive by building walls to protect ourselves. So, we have to think about the
centralization (spoken in Thai)]. So we have to think about decentralization. So we