Dr Warong Fights to Cut MP Benefits
Should MPs get free food, eight assistants, and a pension?
Struggling people everywhere wonder whether their politicians are being paid too much. For a small party, this is fertile ground with which to raise their profile. In a strategically astute move, the Thai Pakdee Party’s only MP, Dr Warong Dechgitvigrom, has chosen to make MP benefits his first rallying cry on his first return to parliament after an absence of 12 years.
In his very first speech to parliament, Warong made three attention-grabbing proposal:
Ending the practice of providing free food to MPs. (They were receiving an allowance of 1,000 baht a day for food, a budget totaling 72 million baht a year).
Reducing the number of assistants each MP is entitled to from eight to three.
Reconsidering the MPs’ pension system.
So far, Warong’s proposal on cutting free food has gotten the most traction. This proposal is not completely new; MPs from both Future Forward and Pheu Thai have suggested reducing this budget in the past. Warong managed to cut through the noise, however, and a wave of popular agreement on social media seems to have pushed MPs from various larger parties to also express their consent on cutting this benefit. Some minority noises, who argued that this is a reasonable benefit, were largely outweighed by those who said that an MP receiving a salary over a hundred thousand baht per month should be able to pay for their own meals.
More controversial are the other two proposals. The eight assistants that MP have are split into two three categories. There is one “personal expert” (ผู้เชี่ยวชาญประจำตัว) who is tasked with providing expert advice to the MP; they receive a salary of 24,000 baht per month. There are also two “personal specialists” (ผู้ชำนาญการประจำตัว) who help the MP with research and gathering data for use in parliamentary speeches. They receive a 15,000 baht salary. Finally, the MP is entitled to five additional assistants who assist with work outside of an MP’s official responsibilities, such as visiting their constituencies and resolving local issues. They also receive a 15,000 baht salary. In October, these salaries will be increased (the personal expert will receive 28,800 baht and the others will receive 18,000 baht).
While these salaries are not at all high, the required budget to pay for eight assistants for 500 MPs do add up. So do MPs need eight assistants? One MP told me that he makes effective use of all eight. Constituency MPs in particular probably do need a number of staff members to help with responding to local concerns. But whether all MPs need eight assistants is probably up for legitimate debate. In the UK, MPs receive a set budget that they can use to hire as few or as many staff members as they see fit; they typically employ around five, although staff there say they are overstretched. Warong himself has said that he will hire only three — but critics would probably counter that he is a party-list MP with no responsibility to any particular constituency. Expect much more discussion about this in the future, along with more pushback from other MPs than in the free food debate.
The final proposal on MPs’ pensions is perhaps the most popular with the public. The pension scheme began in 2014 and, as the Bangkok Post summarizes it, has MPs paying 3,500 baht per month to the provident fund; MPs who serve at least one year then receive monthly payments starting at a minimum of 21,300 baht (and more depending on how long the MP spent in parliament). The ex-MPs also receive additional health and child educational benefits. The Economic Party under Chris Potrananda has joined Warong’s crusade against this system, pledging not to take their pensions.
At a time of increasing economic challenges, it is unsurprising that MPs’ benefits that have gone under radar in the past now face increasing scrutiny. In Thai, the word for populism (prachaniyom) typically refers to giveaways for the people, but the global definition of populism usually refers to the taking up of the mantle of the common people in opposition to an elite group. The mood in Thailand is receptive to this second form of populism, and one wonders whether it will emerge as increasingly electorally salient.
As for Dr Warong: it’s still very early in the parliamentary term, but thus far he has broken out as someone who has punched way above his own small party’s weight.