THE
ROVING EYE Thaksin meets the press - in
court By Pepe Escobar
BANGKOK - Once upon a time, Thailand was
known to have a free and open press. Not anymore.
In the 2005 Worldwide Press Freedom Index,
released last month by Paris-based Reporters
Without Borders and ranking 167 countries,
Thailand shows up at a far from flattering 107th
place, behind post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia and
post-Suharto Indonesia.
As far as the
Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) is
concerned, the issue is clear-cut. "More than
anything, or anybody else, Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra should take the blame for this
dismaying portrayal of Thailand as a country where
the press is suddenly under a dark cloud," says
SEAPA executive director Roby Alampay. Whenever
billionaire tycoon
Thaksin, his government, or
his family's and friends' companies don't like
what the Thai press has to say about them, they
tend to sue. Big time.
In early 2005,
Thaksin solemnly promised Thai voters that he
would support press freedom. Now, at least in
Bangkok, there's a perception that his concept of
press freedom takes a cue from the former prime
minister and resident neo-Confucius of Singapore,
the eminent Lee Kwan Yew, who in the mid-1990s
successfully sued the International Herald Tribune
and Dow Jones, publisher of the late Far Eastern
Economic Review. There's a difference though. Lee
Kwan Yew sued foreigners who allegedly slandered
him. Thaksin and his government go after
compatriots.
'Distorting the
facts' The running talk of the town in
Bangkok is the legal battle pitting Thaksin
against Sondhi Limthongkul, founder of Manager
Media Group, one of the most influential media
groups in Thailand. Asia Times Online is an
affiliated publication.
On September 30,
Thaksin filed a lawsuit, in both criminal and
civil courts, against Sondhi, his co-host Sarocha
Pornudomsak and Thaiday Dot Com, a sister company
of Manager Media Group and producer of the
no-nonsense Thailand This Week political talk
show, seeking 500 million baht (US$12 million) for
defamation. The reason: alleged comments made on
the talk show on September 9 by both Sondhi and
Sarocha questioning the prime minister's
allegiance to revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
The talk show - which used to air on
Thailand's Channel 9, a property of the
state-controlled Mass Communication Organization
of Thailand (MCOT) - was abruptly banned on
September 15, only a few days after the
contentious edition. MCOT's reason: "one-sided"
and "unfair" attacks on the prime minister and
insinuations regarding his relationship with the
King.
On October 11, Thaksin again filed a
lawsuit in both criminal and civil courts against
Manager Media Group, publisher of the Manager
Daily newspaper, and two of its executives,
seeking an additional 500 million baht for
defamation. The reason: severe criticism of the
government in a public sermon by respected, senior
Buddhist monk Luangta Maha Bua published in the
newspaper on September 27.
According to
Thaksin's chief lawyer, Thana Benjathikul,
claiming a total of $24 million in damages makes
sense because of Thaksin's "very high social
status as the prime minister". He says that
according to Thai law, the maximum amount,
established a long time ago, used to be a paltry 5
million baht (less than US$125,000). So the $24
million is a case of adjusting to inflation. "This
is the amount we are requesting, but it's up to
the court to establish how much the defendant will
have to pay." As he sees it, the lawsuit against
Sondhi, Sarocha and Thaiday Dot Com is to counter
"malicious" attacks against Thaksin, and the
lawsuit against Manager Media Group to counter
attacks against Thaksin's government. The civil
lawsuit against Sondhi is to protect the prime
minister's reputation.
Thana denies this
legal overdrive has anything to do with gagging
the press. "Newspapers here can criticize
everything. You may have an opinion, but you
cannot attack anybody with no proof." He adds that
"if the media distorts facts in their reports, the
prime minister is entitled to use his rights as a
citizen to sue".
The assertion that the
Thai media "distorts facts" warrants
investigation. As Thana puts it, Thaksin's legal
action is essentially against a newspaper headline
chosen by Manager Daily when it published the
sermon of Luangta Maha Bua. Thaksin's lawsuit
accuses Manager Media Group and executives
Saowalak Thiranujanyong and Khunthong
Lorserivanich of some sort of conspiracy to defame
the prime minister. The headline is cited as the
key evidence.
Thana also sounds like an
executive editor when he says that the newspaper
should have edited what the prime minister
considers "slanderous" comments. So according to
Thaksin and his lawyer, the newspaper defamed him
because it printed the sermon in its entirety
("other newspapers published only selected
passages"), with no editing, but with a dubious
headline ("they mixed their own opinion with the
sermon"). Thana says he will prove in court that
the headline was false.
Thaksin's lawyer
also confirms that Luangta Maha Bua will not be
sued alongside Sondhi, essentially because in Thai
Buddhist culture it is "inappropriate" to sue a
revered holy man with hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions of followers nationwide: "He's
very well known. Mr Thaksin also used to like
him."
According to Sombat Wongkamhaeng,
secretary general of the Law Society of Thailand,
anyone in Thailand has the right to pick and
choose anyone else to be sued. Thana for his part
could not have been more explicit. "If he were not
a monk, we could have taken legal action against
him."
But legal action against him is
exactly what Luangta Maha Bua wants.
Sue me, I can take it Even
revered senior monks in Buddhist Thailand are not
immune to lawsuits. Luangta Maha Bua, 92, is the
head of Wat Pha Ban Tad, a temple in the
northeastern Thai province of Udon Thani. He is
perceived, even in worldly Bangkok, as
controversial, outspoken and prone to swearing.
Many elderly, traditionalist Thais don't
appreciate his activism, insisting that politics
is not for monks.
Luangta Maha Bua does
not shy away from performing an important
political role. During the severe 1997 Thai
financial crisis, he successfully mobilized Thais
in the kingdom and abroad to alleviate the
economic hardship by donating gold and US dollars
to the Bank of Thailand. He also helped Thaksin to
fight for his political life when the prime
minister, then in his first term in office, had to
prove that he did not try to conceal his billions
from public scrutiny.
The lawsuit contends
that publishing "harsh" and "untrue" statements is
not an "act of good faith". Thana insists that
"even if the sermon was real, a newspaper must be
careful not to print falsehood that can cause
damage to another person." He has defended the
lawsuit on the ground that "it's an exercise of an
individual's right to protect his reputation and
privacy. The newspaper [Manager Daily] did not
criticize the prime minister fairly as a public
official, but rather took him to task personally,
using harsh words, which was damaging to him."
The fact that Luangta Maha Bua - who
actually pronounced the "falsehood" and the "harsh
words" - is not being sued does not mean that the
government has let him off the hook. On October
13, while Thaksin was on state business in Europe,
Deputy Prime Minister Wisanu Krea-ngam - allegedly
a legal expert - went on the offensive, saying
that Luangta Maha Bua had defamed the prime
minister. "The sermon contained many strong words
and was driven by hatred. We've also secured a
hard copy of the sermon that was published on the
Internet." Wisanu added, "By the way, there are
still many good monks out there."
Luangta
Maha Bua may not make the "good monk" list because
he has publicly challenged Thaksin to name him as
a co-defendant in the lawsuit. "Why didn't the
premier sue me if my sermon had caused damage?" he
asks. After confirming that Manager Daily
published his exact words, the senior monk
emphasized that he is "ready to go to jail ... The
truth is that I've heard complaints from many
Thais from all over the country that this
government is very politically ambitious. This
will hurt all the country's important institutions
in the long run."
As this green curry
opera developed, the "multimillion baht question"
- in the words of the local English-language
daily, The Nation - of why Thaksin chose not to
sue the monk who attacked him in the first place,
kept coming back.
Finally, on October 16,
the prime minister himself volunteered the reason:
"He had been kind to me, so I'm going to be kind
to him." Civil rights lawyer and constitutional
expert Thongbai Thongpao says, "The prime minister
has the right to sue anyone he wants. No one can
force the prime minister to sue anybody. This does
not depend on Luangta Maha Bua's wishes."
But the press is not convinced. In an
editorial, The Nation argued that "the decision to
avoid suing Luangta Maha Bua may, ironically, end
up doing more damage to the prime minister's
reputation than the monk's original comments
allegedly did".
Thai journalists comment
that Luangta Maha Bua's hundreds of thousands of
followers may be inclined to consider Thaksin's
legal moves as "unwise" - something that in an
exceedingly polite society such as Thailand,
unlike in the West, bears a catastrophic
connotation.
Especially after the senior
monk said that "the intention [of his sermon] was
like a little scolding [from a teacher; he still
considers Thaksin one of his disciples]. It was
purely a teaching for the benefit of peace and
order for our nation, religion and monarchy."
Luangta Maha Bua emphasized that in his sermon he
used the figure of Devadatta, the Buddha's enemy,
"as a metaphor". One is entitled to conclude that
Sondhi, Sarocha and Thaiday.com are being sued
because of a metaphor.
Patriarchal
matters The lawsuit against Sondhi, Sarocha
and Thaiday.com also charges that during the
September 9 TV show the hosts implied that Thaksin
interfered with the appointment of a group of
senior monks tasked to select a caretaker Buddhist
Supreme Patriarch. In Thailand, this highly
sensitive matter is a prerogative of the King.
The current Supreme Patriarch, Somdet Phra
Yanasangvara, 92, had not performed any ceremonies
in public for months because of health problems.
So "the government appointed a panel of senior
monks to select an acting Patriarch", recalls
Paisal Sricharatchanya, publisher and
editor-in-chief of ThaiDay, an English-language
daily distributed in Thailand along with the
International Herald Tribune. A top Thai
journalist, he has spent many years with the
Bangkok Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Paisal says that while the Supreme
Patriarch was "still alive, functioning and his
health improving", the government appointed an
acting Patriarch allegedly on the grounds that the
ailing elder monk might be exploited by
unscrupulous souls.
According to the
criminal lawsuit, Sondhi and Sarocha "falsely
accused the plaintiff beyond the boundary of media
freedom" as far as the Supreme Patriarch
controversy was concerned. That's not how Sarocha
tells it. "Sondhi's brother is a doctor, part of
the medical panel which was reviewing the Supreme
Patriarch's health. So Sondhi was stating a fact.
He had access to the schedule proving that the
Supreme Patriarch was fulfilling his duties."
Thana sees the issue differently: "There
are not two Supreme Patriarchs in Thailand. It is
against the law. One of them is only temporary.
And it was a committee that appointed him, not the
prime minister." He says both he and Thaksin
watched the program at the time, and the video
will be produced in court as evidence for the
prosecution.
As far as the controversy
around Luangta Maha Bua is concerned, Sondhi's
lawyer, Suwat Apaipakdi, quoting what is common
knowledge in Thai media circles, says that "every
newspaper reproduced his comments. Why did Thaksin
not sue him? He chose to sue only the Manager
Media Group because it's linked to Khun [Mr]
Sondhi. This is part of a personal conflict
between them." As a lawyer, Suwat is adamant. "The
two lawsuits have no merit." Thongbai, the
constitutional expert, disagrees. He thinks they
do have merit, "and do not constitute an attack on
freedom of the press". Thana for his part says
both accusations are "very easy" to prove.
How to sue a parable Manager
Online, says Paisal, is the most popular website
and forum in Thailand. One of its readers emailed
a parable called "Lost Sheep" which was then read
by Sondhi on his talk show, with no comments, as
Sarocha recalls it. The identity of the reader has
not been revealed.
Suwat, Sondhi's lawyer,
is keen to point out that "the story does not
refer to the prime minister. Under Thai criminal
law, if you tell a story, you are not guilty." He
adds that "if Mr Thaksin thinks he is the Big
Brother in the family portrayed in the story, he
obviously has to think that the story is about
him." Thongbai disagrees. He says that as the
story was made public and read on the air, the
prosecution will invoke article 328 in the
criminal court to prove that the story was
critical of the prime minister as a public figure.
Thai journalists, at least at the
English-language dailies, The Nation, Bangkok Post
and ThaiDay, overwhelmingly agree that the fact
that Thaksin also chose not to sue state-owned
MCOT, the owner of Channel 9, adds to the
perception of a politically-motivated lawsuit.
Suwat notes, "They did not sue Channel 9 because
it is a government company."
Suwat shows
the list of witnesses to be called by the
prosecution in Thaksin's lawsuit. Number 1 is the
prime minister himself. Numbers 6 and 7 are two
MCOT executives sued by Sondhi, and number 10 is
the general director of MCOT. "That's the whole
story of this case," says the affable lawyer.
"Thaksin ordered MCOT to close down the TV
program. And when Khun Sondhi sued three MCOT
executives, Thaksin sued back. The cases are
directly linked."
The chronology is clear.
The talk show was cancelled by MCOT on September
15. On September 26, Sondhi sued three MCOT
executives for canceling the program, demanding a
symbolic 1 baht (2 1/2 US cents) in damages. Four
days later, Thaksin slapped Sondhi, co-host
Sarocha and Thaiday Dot Com with the $12 million
lawsuit. Suwat says that "Khun Sondhi wanted to
show what is wrong and what is right. He doesn't
want any money." Thongbai, for his part, says he
does not understand why Sondhi sued for only 1
baht in damages. At the same time, "I cannot say
whether the prime minister is trying to bankrupt
anyone. Let justice decide".
Thana does
not like the 1 baht lawsuit one bit. "The court is
not a joke. Mr Sondhi just wanted to get people's
attention." He points out that MCOT and Thaiday
Dot Com had signed a written contract stipulating
that no heavy criticism was allowed on the
program. So MCOT identified Sondhi's comments as a
breach of contract and cancelled the show. "It's
very difficult to control a live program," he
adds.
Under the 1997 Thai constitution
which, much more than its predecessors, sternly
protects freedom of speech, this is the first time
that a Thai prime minister has sued the media for
defamation. Suwat takes it further: "This is the
first time that a prime minister has sued a
newspaperman in the history of democracy in
Thailand."
Paisal, echoing what is
standard conversation fare among Bangkok's smart
set, comments that "most people in Bangkok now
criticize Thaksin. His urban base among the middle
classes is eroding. They perceive the government
as corrupt, and the prime minister as a member of
a greedy family, too dictatorial, hot tempered and
arrogant." But Paisal, who has fought a few
lawsuits himself, is careful to add that "the
countryside does not care about lawsuits. What
they care about is money."
SEAPA for its
part warns about "a practice of self-censorship
among the [Thai] media amid the use of state
emergency power", as well as the fact that
Thaksin's government "is behind the commercial bid
to take over independent newspapers". This is a
direct reference to hostile takeover bids by Thai
entertainment giant GMM Grammy Group against the
media groups that publish the Thai-language daily
Matichon and the English-language daily Bangkok
Post. GMM Grammy Group chairman Paiboon
Damrongchaitham is extremely close to Thaksin, and
has made it clear on the record that GMM would
interfere with the management of both newspapers.
The sue-till-they-drop
syndrome It's not only Sondhi and the
Manager Media Group. The Thai press is fighting
nothing less than a lawsuit tsunami.
The
English-language daily, Bangkok Post, is fighting
a 1 billion baht defamation lawsuit by the
Airports Authority of Thailand over a
controversial report about cracks in a runway at
the new, still-under-construction,
way-behind-schedule Suvarnabhumi Airport.
The Thai-language daily, Matichon, is
being sued by a group of executives of Picnic
Corporation, a cooking gas company now under
investigation for alleged stock-related fraud. The
lawsuit demands 10 billion baht in damages.
Another lawsuit - demanding 5 billion baht,
targets the business weekly Prachachat Turakij,
owned by Matichon, which also reported on the
Picnic case. Picnic was set up by a former deputy
commerce minister, Suriya Larpwisuthisin, who had
to resign from the government last July when
members of his family, who were in control of
Picnic, were charged with fraud.
The Thai
Post is being sued by Shin Corp - founded by
Thaksin and now controlled by his family - for
insinuating that the company received preferential
government treatment. The lawsuit demands 200
million baht in damages. Journalist and freedom of
speech campaigner Supinya Klangnarong, for her
part, is fighting her own libel suit - 400 million
baht - also filed by Shin Corp. Supinya is the
author of an interview published by the Thai Post
in which some tough questions are asked regarding
the connection between Shin Corp's soaring profits
and Thaksin's years in government.
Recently, in her one and only court
appearance before the final verdict in December,
clasping a purple, semi-precious stone as a lucky
charm, Supinya denounced "a climate of fear"
prevailing in Thai society. In this sense, she is
echoing Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch, for
whom "there is now a real sense of fear". Supinya
feels that "deep down ... the lawsuit was filed in
order to stop criticism of the Thaksin Shinawatra
administration". It is well known in Thailand,
Supinya says, that "majority shareholders of Shin
Corp are members of the prime minister's family,
his son and daughters, and Thaksin often says he
needs to ask for money from his wife."
Most crucially, Supinya stresses that her
information on Shin Corp's fabulous profits, which
tripled between 2001 and 2002 after Thaksin's Thai
Rak Thai Party came to power, was obtained from
Shin Corp's own press releases.
A petition
calling for Shin Corp to drop the criminal charges
has been signed by a number of leading
international intellectuals, including Noam
Chomsky and Armand Mattelart. It's unlikely to
produce any effect on the company.
Fight for the right to talk
Senior Thai newspaper editors and
publishers recently got together in an emergency
meeting called by Thailand's Press Council to
analyze what the Bangkok Post described as "an
unprecedented threat against their constitutional
right to free expression". By this time Sondhi had
already decided to take his talk show on the road
and turn it into an expanded exercise in
participative democracy.
Co-host Sarocha,
who is network program director for the Thailand
Outlook Channel, confirms that since September 23
they are broadcasting live every Friday from an
auditorium at Thammasat University in Bangkok,
with an audience of up to 4,000. "On October 14,
Thailand's "day of democracy", the audience was
over 10,000." They recently took the show to a
packed central Bangkok park, claiming the
auditorium was too small.
As the co-host,
she says she is getting "a lot more feedback"
after the controversy. She gets thousands of SMS
comments and there's a weekly poll as well.
Viewers can order a VCD of each show for only 55
baht, as well as yellow T-shirts with the slogan
"We will fight for the King" printed in Thai. The
only political talk show in Thailand is now
broadcast on News One, a 24-hour, Thai-language
satellite news channel. When it was on terrestrial
Channel 9, the ratings used to be around 3
percentage points, unusually high for a program
about politics.
Suwat is "absolutely sure"
it's impossible for a Thai court order to silence
Sondhi, as many in the Thai press fear. He says
the court date for examining Sondhi's 1 baht
lawsuit against the three MCOT executives is
December 19. November 28 is the first hearing for
the Thaksin lawsuit against the Manager Media
Group, and December 26 the first hearing for the
lawsuit against Sondhi, Sarocha and Thaiday Dot
Com. Suwat will call a large number of witnesses,
including academics and royalty. The Civil Court
will rule on compensation only in March 2006. If
they are found guilty, Sondhi and Manager Media
Group have only 10 days to pay the full 1 billion
baht in damages.
If the prime minister,
his family's and friends' companies and government
politicians win all the ongoing lawsuits, they
stand to collect up to US$486 million. For some,
Thaksin's pledge to eradicate poverty is on track.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing
.)
