Thailand's Sangha Bill still controversial

Thailand's Sangha Bill still controversial

Tavivat Puntarigvivat, Director World Buddhist University's
Institute of Research and Development, The Nation, Asia News Network,
Bangkok

The much-publicized controversy over the new Sangha Bill,
which seeks to reform the country's Buddhist monastic community,
has attracted public interest in a bitterly-contested question of
how best to govern the more than 300,000 Buddhist monks
nationwide.

The new Sangha Bill will be taken back to the drawing board.
Those who have a vested interest, one way or another, who want to
rush the proposed legislation through Parliament will find it
more difficult to do so due to heightened public scrutiny.

The next step should be for the government to set up a review
committee made up of senior monks, lay experts and legal experts
from the Juridical Council to seek a consensus.

Ideally, wider public participation should be encouraged. A
national assembly similar to the one assigned to draft the
present Constitution should be created comprising Buddhist monks
and lay Buddhists.

Social and economic development over the years necessitates
reform of the Buddhist monastic community.

Unfortunately, the new Sangha Bill endorsed by the Sangha
Supreme Council, is modeled on the most "authoritarian" version
of previous Sangha Acts.

Going back centuries, Buddhism in Thailand was protected and
preserved by a checks and balances system among the state,
monastic authority and the public.

The interaction between the three had been effective in
ensuring that monks adhere to precepts and good behavior as well
as solving problems that arose.

The people have the responsibility to provide for the
financial and material needs of the clerical community as well as
to monitor the behavior of monks, who are supposed to concentrate
on studying the Dhamma.

Local people and the community imposed sanctions on wayward
monks.

At the same time, the state provided the monastic community
with security from domestic and foreign threats, including heresy
and false teachings.

The advent of the first Sangha Act changed all that. People
and the various communities have since been excluded from having
a say in monastic affairs.

Monks are no longer accountable to the public. The monastic
authority provides protection for Buddhist monks. That's why
monks who commit wrongdoing can continue to remain in the
monkhood despite being involved in well publicized scandals,
provided they are protected by the monastic authority.

The monastic authority is now operating not unlike a state
bureaucracy, with the same inefficiency, lack of accountability
and corruption.

At the same time, the state has been reduced to serving as the
secretariat for the Sangha Supreme Council instead of playing an
active role in the governing of Buddhist monks.

Under the Sangha Act BE 2535 (1992), the King's power to
approve the appointment of the Supreme Patriarch was removed,
effectively ending any vestige of state control over the monastic
authority, which went on to be come accountable to no-one in the
land.

The new Sangha Bill must make sure that the state and the
people are restored as key players in the administering of
monastic affairs.