Thai Court Gains No Glory

By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / IPS WRITER

BANGKOK — The recent judgment by Thailand’s Constitutional Court confirmed the power it has to sack a politician or party found guilty of election malpractice, even if it smacked of the kangaroo courts of neighboring, military-ruled Burma.

Last week, the nine judges on the bench found the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and two smaller parties in its coalition guilty of political crimes committed by a handful of party officials at the December 2007 general elections.

The court ruled that the three parties had to be dissolved and scores of party executives banned from politics for five years, triggering a collapse of the government. Such a stiff penalty—to deprive people of their civic rights through a form of collective punishment—is enshrined in the 2007 constitution, which was drafted by a committee selected by the military junta that was in power following a September 2006 coup.

While such judicial power is being cheered in some quarters as a welcome development to save Thailand’s flawed democracy, others are asking aloud if proper legal procedure is being followed in arriving at such radical verdicts.

Typical among the critics is Prasit Pivavatnapanich, who has been troubled at the speed at which the judges delivered their unanimous verdict after two of the accused parties finished giving their final statements.

"The court started reading out their verdict for this case within 30 minutes to an hour of the final statements," says Prasit, an associate professor at the law faculty at Thammasat University, in Bangkok. "I have never seen this happening anywhere in the world."

"Many Thai people are wondering why the court rushed to deliver the judgment," he revealed in an interview. "The court should have taken more time and adjudicated with caution, since dissolving a political party and denying its leaders the right to vote is a serious matter."

In fact a statement released by Prasit and four other dons from his law faculty after the ruling drew attention to other embarrassing details. "After the complainants finished the closing declaration, the constitutional court read the decisions immediately with mistakes and had to correct (them) during the reading," the statement noted.

Such flaws have consequently helped give rise to a view that sees this powerful court in poorer light. "Some Thai people, including me, are wondering if the court had written the judgment already, before the final statements were given," says Prasit. "People will begin to have doubts about this judicial process."

Doubts arose after the judges suddenly announced on November 28 that the court had no more time to listen to the witnesses and evidence of the accused parties and set December 2 as the final day of the case. This abrupt decision came after the accused parties had been guaranteed time to present testimony in their defense.

The banned PPP drew attention to this about-turn in its first formal response after Tuesday’s ruling. "The rush to dissolve the political parties before finishing examining witnesses makes society lose confidence in and have doubts about the courts," it said, before adding a damning indictment: "It can be called a judicial coup."

This was the second time, in fact, that the Constitutional Court had come down hard against the PPP this year, after it won the poll to succeed a military regime.

In September, the court ruled against Samak Sundaravej, then prime minister and head of the PPP-led coalition government, for the crime of receiving payment to appear on a popular cooking show as celebrity chef. Samak’s successor as prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, was banned this week by the court, along with 36 other executives of the PPP.

The fate of more parliamentarians from the PPP and its two smaller allies may soon be determined by the court. A petition being submitted by a group of appointed senators from the upper house calling for their dismissal for the way they were elected at the December 2007 poll—as candidates representing the parties and voted as party-list parliamentarians—than representing constituencies and being chosen by voters from a particular constituency.

The transformation of this court as a pivotal battleground to determine the future of Thai democracy grew out of a watershed moment in April 2006. That month, the country’s revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, admonished the judges to do their job properly and clean up the political "mess" in the country.

The king’s speech to the judges came after months of public protests, drawing tens of thousands to Bangkok’s streets, targeting the powerful government of Thaksin Shinawatra, which had been elected with huge mandates since 2001 but was forced out of power in the 2006 coup. The Thaksin administration was accused of corruption, nepotism and abuse of power.

In early May that year, the then bench of the Constitutional Court delivered an unprecedented verdict, nullifying the results of a controversial election held on April 2. The ruling was welcome by scholars, human rights groups and activists. It was a break from a past where the judiciary shied away from political disputes and was rarely adjudicated major electoral issues.

However the coup that deposed Thaksin’s increasingly one-party state exposed the judiciary’s principles. There were no protests when the junta formed after the country’s 18th coup tore up the existing constitution, where staging a coup was illegal and deemed an act of treason.

The judiciary was as silent when the junta appointed a Constitutional Tribunal to prosecute Thaksin’s party for political crimes based on an order given by the military leaders after grabbing power.

That special tribunal ruled against the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai –TRT) party in May 2007, calling for it to be disbanded and 111 of its executives, including Thaksin, to be banned from politics for five years.

This week’s ruling by the Constitutional Court against the PPP, which is a successor to the TRT, drawing from the same, largely poorer vote base, was clearly shaped by that precedent.

And like it happened with the TRT verdict, human rights groups are not amused at the law that the court used to go after a few errant politicians.

"The constitution that was referred to by the Constitutional Court as the legal basis for the party’s dissolution and the barring of 109 party executives for five years involvement in politics, is undemocratic," says Pokpong Lawansiri, a Thai activist at the Asian Forum for Human Rights, a regional rights lobby.

"The ouster of a constitutionally elected government may be only the beginning of trouble,'' the activist said.