With recent allegations of kickbacks and a planned bloc vote by pro-government senators ahead of the Upper House session to nominate nine anti-graft commissioners, the "bad old days"

have returned to haunt the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC) just when the country desperately needs it to fix its system of checks and balances.

The allegations - whether they are true or not - have undermined the credibility of the NCCC, the anti-graft agency that has had no commissioners for almost two years.

Amid widespread public sentiment that the government under Thaksin Shinawatra had failed to curb corruption, and was even involved in graft itself in some cases, the absence of the NCCC played a major role in the fall of his last administration.

Few people believed Thaksin when he insisted that a Bt73-billion sell-off of Shin Corp to Singapore's Temasek Holdings had nothing to do with him or that it had not been an attempt to exploit government schemes in order to benefit his family business.

Without an NCCC stamp declaring his innocence, civil movements stood their ground so forcefully that Thaksin dissolved the House with the hope of easing growing tensions.

Thaksin should be one of many to take the blame for all the troubles that have befallen the NCCC.

The NCCC appeared to be realising the nation's dream of removing "unqualified" and "unclean" politicians when Thaksin was charged with asset-concealment at the start of his administration. When he narrowly survived the resulting Constitution Court case in 2001, however, the anti-graft commission's heyday had come to an end.

With a belief that Thaksin would never allow any incidents that would again put himself on the brink of demise, the NCCC, along with other independent agencies supposedly scrutinising the government, has been tarnished with rumours and allegations of kickbacks and bloc voting in favour of government-sponsored candidates.

The situation has gone from bad to worse, so that now all independent agencies are allegedly controlled by the government's men.

An NCCC selection process was begun in early 2004 to fill vacant seats after the terms of seven commissioners expired. More than 80 of 200 senators picked the same seven of 14 candidates during the final selection before they were passed for royal endorsement.

With the NCCC's credibility in doubt over the seemingly fixed result, the anti-graft agency soon faced the biggest crisis since its establishment in 1999, one that forced it to suspend all of its operations, including all ongoing graft probes, in October 2004.

The suspension was related to a constitutional rule as a tribunal of the Supreme Court prepared for a judicial inquiry into all nine commissioners awarding themselves pay hikes without parliamentary approval two months earlier.

Although a new selection was launched to replace the nine commissioners, who finally resigned in May 2005 after being found guilty by the Supreme Court, the final step of the selection process several months later was halted after the nine nominees failed to win approval from His Majesty the King.

The reason was that a candidate withdrew only a few hours before the Senate selected nine nominees out of 18 candidates.

The final withdrawal of the candidate was said to be the result of a plot planned by graft suspects whose cases were approaching statute-of-limitations expiry.

The NCCC is facing what could turn out to be a new round of scandals. With allegations of kickbacks and bloc voting, there is no guarantee that the new selection process won't become the victim of foul play in the end.

Weerayut Chokchaimadon

The Nation