3) New Political Order
The 1997 Constitution and subsequent political environment have created opportunities for the people and CSOs to participate more in political process. Apart from guaranteeing basic rights of individual citizens, the constitution also recognizes community rights for the first time. The people are able to propose their own laws, increase their bargaining power and have their development approaches adopted as government policies.
Weaknesses
Although Thai NPOs/NGOs have been continuously working and trying to adjust themselves to the changing situations, in general they have a number of persistent weaknesses:
(1). Lack of adequate financial and other resources needed for operation
Most of Thai NGOs depend on financial supports from foreign donors/funding agencies as they are not known widely and have negative images among the public in general. Moreover, financial supports normally come on project-by-project basis; each project is one to three years long at most. This results in their being insecure and unsustainable. Many NGOs then could not work continuously to create wide-range, deep and sustainable impacts. Some of them have to change beneficiaries or themes of operation in response to available funds.
(2). Personnel problems
Resource insecurity prevents many development workers or NGO personnel to be able to work continuously according to their vision. They are underpaid or paid lower than comparable jobs in other sectors. For survival of themselves and their families, they have to leave NGOs to work in other sectors, or move to other bigger, more secure NGOs to do the kind of work that may not be of their highest capacity or interest. Small NGOs therefore normally have the problem of high staff turnover or loss of experienced staff.
(3). Lack of systematic gathering, analysis and synthesis of experience into a body of knowledge
Many Thai NGOs and NGO personnel have years of direct experiences doing social and other development work. Such experience, however, is not systematically gathered, analysed and synthesized into a body of knowledge that can be disseminated or used as model for replication or application elsewhere. Many important experiences remain with the very persons of development workers and are lost when they leave the organizations or NGO sector. Consequently, they have not moved forward as much as they could and should; many NGOs repeat the mistakes they or other NGOs have made without being able to learn valuable lessons from the past.
(4). Poor information system
The majority of Thai NGOs lack workable information system that stores, arranges and utilises information effectively. They also lack personnel with required expertise, equipment/hardware and plan to develop the information system.
(5). Inadequate international partnership
Thai NGOs have had relationships with NPOs/NGOs in other countries for a long time. However, until recently most of these relationships have been one-way financial transaction between the foreign donors and Thai recipient NGOs. There is a need for improvement of these relationships into that of "partnership" for creative mutual support and joint programmes or activities.
Precaution for the future
Kritaya et al (1999: 1i-1iii) point out that precautions must be taken if civil society sector is to become the "endorsed alternative in order to avoid unscrupulous parties from exploiting civil society for their own benefits," as seen from women's rights work and environmental issues, for example. They believe that this could lead to fake civic activities, fake civic researchers and academics.
