Anti Govt Expectations: Case Dismissed!

[virtualtraveller]

(Note! Bit long, sorry but consider this alternative argument to the fallout)

Monday's ruling might well sound like a sick joke to many anti-govt supporters desperate to see a change in leadership, but was it really a travesty of justice. Certainly the lack of closure on this case isn't going to help reconciliation, nor the court's battered reputation, but are we looking at a legal injustice or an injustice of expectations?

Your average working class citizen can be forgiven for thinking the cards are stacked in favour of the Democrats and their backers, since rulings in recent years seem to always go against the Thaksin-clique, but favour the 'elite's lackeys'. But the complexities and processes of the law aren't that simple, and any MP or politician ought to know better. The fallout from this verdict is less to do with a 'suspect judgement' and more to do with manipulated expectations.

The Democrats escaped any further review on Monday due to a 'technicality'. A technicality saved Thaksin's skin in 2001, more recently Sanoh a month ago, as it does for hundreds of cases internationally every year. Justice may seem cheated, but if the due processes in the prosecution aren't followed then an appeal for a flawed case deems the defendant innocent until finally proven guilty correctly. Unfortunately, as seen in this case, the courts are only doing their job to the letter of law by throwing it out, and the villain may well be a 'conspiring' EC member – who could be subject to a malfeasance charge.

So, did the EC deliberately save the Democrats by creating this technicality. Here's where the expectation manipulation should be considered in context. The way I understand the news reporting; a whistleblower provided evidence to the EC that the Democrats had violated election laws, the EC appointed a panel to investigate, who determined there was no case. The EC committees sent it back for review (a wise move due to the politically sensitive nature), again it was returned as no case.

Later, Red shirts lead by Jaturporn Prompan (an MP) pressured the EC and threatened them, compelling them to respond by overriding the panel and forwarding the case to the Constitutional Court to consider. This is where the 'technicality' arises. The EC probably well knew that it would be thrown out since the 15 days had expired (not certain about this, but presumably from the date they considered the panel's suggestions), however they probably went ahead to satisfy the red shirts and get the hot potato off their hands. Most legal experts, including trained lawyer Charlerm, were aware this would be the likely ruling.

The courts would have been wiser to overrule the 15 day expiry and proceed with considering the evidence to provide a clear guilty or not guilty verdict to satisfy everyone, but had they done so they would have come under appeal for ignoring the 'technicality' – this is why cases are thrown out.

But there is another reason I believe the courts snaffled the case on the first charge and threw it out. There has been a distinct effort in the past year to discredit the courts, coming from anti-govt supporters linked to the Red Shirts and certain Puea Thai MPs. There was the lunchbox scandal that landed several of Thaksin's junior legal team in the jail. Recently we saw the video-scandal, leaked by a Peua Thai MP.

The courts certainly were caught in a compromising position and didn't do themselves favours by remaining silent on the matter. This is clearly a contempt of court, but the damage is done and question marks remain about their bias. The motivations behind all this is not so much to pressure the courts, but to pressure public opinion into believing that the courts are biased and on the side of the ruling party/elite/military alliance, and therefore all the ill fortune of the past few years since the coup is entirely the result of this.

It creates an idea that 'nothing but a reversion to the 1997 charter and annulment of political cases under the new charter will put things right' – this is a consistent line with the PT's stated objectives to return the Thaksin-clique fully to power. However, as someone succinctly put it to me 'in Thailand for every law there is an equal and opposite law' – meaning that the judges can quite lawfully rule in one way or another. What happened in recent weeks was an attempt by a group to discredit the courts, but it backfired in a way because it may have prompted the judges to take the perfectly legal option of throwing the case out and closing it. Regardless of this the group behind the discredit campaign won a 'perception' victory, for many see the verdict as farcical.

Unfortunately Thailand is a country where law enforcement is shaky and selective and over the past decade this has benefitted both sides of the political divide. In fact it's at the heart of the present political discord. Instances of favouring the government were far worse in the latter years of the Thaksin regime, the current courts are fairly balanced by comparison and all of the recent controversial high profile verdicts have been accompanied by lengthy readings, few of which have been criticised by neutral or international observers. However, to those on the losing end it's all been described as a 'joke' even though they held out faith that the 'joke' would somehow be reliable in considering this trial against the Democrats. The truth is, politicians in Thailand are dirty, and many of those involved with the TRT/PPP/PT have been among the dirtiest and easiest to bring a case against. In recent years the anti-Thaksin group have successfully used the courts in this manner to go after opponents who leverage their power through 'public mandates'. But to a large portion of the public, it's been injustice.

As with everything in this political standoff, there's a lot of 'manipulation of public perception' using selective information, dirty tricks, pressure and set ups. It leaves very little respect for the law, which is serious problem.

Edited December 1, 2010 by cdnvic
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