PUT POLICE REFORM TOP OF THE AGENDA

A Shake-Up Plan For Thailand's Law-Enforcement Body May Be This
Govt's Only Chance To Leave A Lasting Legacy

The interim Surayud government made known its intention to reform
the Royal Thai Police shortly after it came to power last year.
Making police reform a priority issue is consistent with the
government's promise to clean up politics, strengthen the rule of
law and reduce corruption. A national committee, comprising former
police chiefs, criminal justice experts, academics and civil rights
advocates, was set up in November last year to find ways to revamp
the 200,000-strong national police force. Since its formation, the
committee has produced a blueprint for police reform complete with
plans to restructure the present cumbersome organisational set-up
and to make the Royal Thai Police more accountable to the
public. The committee's reform proposal has been widely debated at
various public forums organised by members of civil society groups,
who rightly consider themselves key stakeholders in this
long-overdue reform effort.

The proposal seeks to achieve ambitious goals - among them to
decentralise the police command structure, create an effective
mechanism to monitor and evaluate police performance, raise
professional standards, upgrade working conditions and increase the
current low level of remuneration to officers. The main idea behind
the reforms is to de-politicise the police force and to eliminate
the corruption that has long been widespread among the police rank and file.

There is a consensus among the general public that our police force
is in need of a thorough shake-up. The public perception of the
police is far from flattering. In fact, the force is seen as one of
the most corrupt among all government agencies. The police force has
also been subject to manipulation by politicians. During his almost
six years in power, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra used
the police force to intimidate political opponents and critics. The
ex-premier also used the entire force to commit wholesale human
rights violations in connection with his notorious "war against
drugs" in 2002. During that now infamous campaign, more than 2,500
suspected drug traffickers were killed under dubious circumstances.
The police claimed that many of those who died either resisted
arrest and were killed extrajudicially by law enforcement officials,
or they were liquidated by fellow drug traffickers - the latter
claim being the most widely used to expla! in the large number of deaths.

Little has been done by the Surayud government to shed light on this
dark episode of police brutality. Few, if any, of the police
officers and other law enforcement officials suspected of abusing
their authority have been investigated.

The way things stand, how the Surayud government proposes to
implement reform is as important as setting lofty goals, if not more
so. After all, the police force continues to be plagued by ingrained
corruption. Without a serious attempt to weed out and
punish corrupt officers, any move to reform the police force will
not go far - and is probably doomed to complete failure.

The government, which came to power after the military toppled the
corruption-prone Thaksin government in September last year, has a
unique opportunity to rid corrupt elements from the police force.
But apparently this opportunity has already been missed. With
less than one month to go before it hands over power to
the democratically elected government that will emerge from the
December 23 election, the least this government can do is to put in
place a master plan for drastic reform of the police. Concrete
measures must be implemented under a specific time frame so that the
next government can take over and implemented these without too
much fuss. Police reform is one of the things that should not be
left unfinished by the interim government.

If previous attempts at police reform over the decades are any
guide, civilian governments cannot be trusted to implement change in
a straightforward manner. This is partly due to the lack of public
pressure that would otherwise stiffen a civilian government's
resolve to vigorously push for much-needed change in the way
the police force does its job. The government and the National
Legislative Assembly owe it to the Thai public to bring about
meaningful police reform before they leave office. If there are to
be any positive, lasting legacies that this administration can
justly claim credit for in the future, police reform might be one of them.