Thailand’s Committee on Reform, Reconciliation, and National Strategy Hires Foreign Legal Expert to Help with Law Reform

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BANGKOK – Suvit Maesincee, secretary to the supreme committee on reform, reconciliation, and national strategy said yesterday that a joint committee of private entities working with the government has decided to hire a foreign legal expert to help in the government’s ongoing law reform.

Scott Jacobs, president of Jacobs, Cordova & Associates, who worked for the South Korean government as its legal adviser and helped reform several laws in the country, has been hired, Suvit said.

The government expected the company to take three to six months to complete the job, Suvit added.

Law reform is part of the government’s critical reform effort and it is being addressed along with other critical sectors in the new charter.

Suvit said the reform preparation committee decided yesterday that the supreme body would still be in place although new mechanisms for reform plans and the national strategy would be set up following the new law promulgation. This was to help steer critical reform work, including law reform, he said.

Progress in law reform would be subject to the supreme body’s consideration around the end of this month when it convenes, he said.

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Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who chaired the reform preparation committee yesterday, raised the importance of law reform and the need to improve existing laws in the country to keep up with changes.

Buntoon Srethasirote, chair of the sub-panel working on structural reform, said the panel has addressed several laws that need to be reformed so that the country’s fundamentals could be improved.

At least eight fundamental challenges and 20 reform agendas have been underlined by the panel. The laws that need reformed include those for community forest management, land bank, national park management, community based justice, environmental impact asessment/environmental health impact assessment reforms, and others.

Suvit said that along with law reform, bureaucratic reform is also essential.

The reform preparation committee has addressed seven bureaucratic reform agendas. They include the reform of concerned laws, bureaucratic criteria for assessment, bureaucratic personnel reform, bureaucratic efficiency, state budget and procurement, digital-based bureaucracy, and public service facilitation by the state

By The Nation