Deep Rooted Culture of Corruption
Thailand has had a long history of corruption, and the types regularly seen range from extortion and bribery to use of insider information to buy land. These kinds of corruption are deeply embedded in the Thai society for many reasons. For one, officials were traditionally not paid in salaries, but instead entitled to 10-30% of expenditures for rendering their services. Traditions of giving gifts to high officials also exist. These practices are not directly corrupting, but their continuation when officials actually do receive salaries is a major basis of corruption and how it is perceived as otherwise.
One big area of corruption popular in today's developing countries, including Thailand, is in the energy sector. Millions and billions of dollars are spent all over the world to develop "Clean Energy." Thailand’s power development planning process is premised on perpetuating gains for vested interests and designed to continue providing perverse incentives to extractive and nuclear industries. On top of wrong allocation of finances, large bribes are given to and received by officials (or their families) in charge of choosing contractors for the jobs, like in the recent Suvarnabhumi Airport project, where a car park contractor allegedly gave $250 million USD to an the prime minister's sister in order to secure acquisition of the job.
Read more about this topic: Politics Of Thailand
Famous quotes containing the words deep rooted, deep, rooted, culture and/or corruption:
“Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every bit as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro.... this is no more a man’s world than it is a white world.”
—Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, African American civil rights organization. SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)
“Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every bit as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro.... this is no more a man’s world than it is a white world.”
—Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, African American civil rights organization. SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)
“If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)