Conflict, Legitimacy and Government Reform: Equitable Allocation of ...

Panel Discussion
Even though this group of people seems powerful, in reality they are
not that powerful after all because it is splintered into numerous small
interest groups. More importantly, interest groups of these people have
never been able to form their own organizations in order to actively study
and push for policy implementation. Moreover, they have failed to reach
out to the media that offer policy alternatives. (For example, in many
cases, reduction of pollution in production can reduce more production
costs as well. So, the middle-class fear being out of job more than ruining
their lungs because they never knew that work and healthy lung can coexist.)
When the truth unfolds, these people have no power to influence
public policies and they can neither develop a policy themselves nor
participate in the formulation with promising results. The only thing
they have left is clamor. If they blared loudly, they would get some
attention but if they just complained quietly, they could vent their
frustration because they could feel relieved after making some noise.
The fifth way of how public policies are formed is through what
politicians call “NGOs.” In reality, NGOs today are even more wimpy
(especially when comparing to Jon Ungphakorn who chairs Kor.Por.
Or.Phor.Chor.) because presently NGOs are acting like bureaucrats
working in another department. Their main goal is to keep subsidized
projects running more than anything in the whole world, let alone nasty
fighting among themselves over shares of the pie.
As for the group of people that actively engage in the formulation of
public policies, I’d like to call them “activists.” Some people or some
groups may also be NGOs (like Archarn Jon mentioned above). These
people do not have civic “bases” anywhere. Since they do not perform
some sort of social welfare works like NGOs, they must create civic
“bases” from the policies that they support by advocating these policies
through the media by networking with activist groups in the civic sector
(which are used to partially contribute to the formulation or
modification of public policies supported by them) or directly joining the
civic sector’s movements, provided that such movements correspond to
their public policies.
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