Legal noose tightens on Thailand's
Thaksin By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - Will the rule of law or martial
law finally prevail? That's the question
circulating nowadays in politically tumultuous
Thailand as the country gears up for what will
likely be another round of inconclusive general
elections.
The run-up to the polls,
tentatively scheduled for October 15, have been
overshadowed by legal proceedings against and
official investigations into caretaker Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, his Thai Rak Thai
political party, and his family's controversial
business dealings.
An
electoral-fraud case pending at the Constitutional
Court threatens to disband Thaksin's party
permanently on charges of subverting this year's
April 2 elections, which the Supreme Court has
already declared null and void. Thai Rak Thai
officials have twice requested extensions to
court-set deadlines to present their defense,
which they now must submit by September 19.
An official investigation is also under
way into the Shinawatra family's controversial
US$1.9 billion sale of their majority holdings in
the Shin Corporation in January to Singapore's
Temasek Holdings, a convoluted divestment that
legal experts and opposition politicians contend
violated the Foreign Business Act, which bans
majority foreign ownership of certain strategic
industries, including telecommunications.
Thaksin also faces two possible perjury
charges in the Criminal Court from an unresolved
business conflict dating back to the 1980s with
William Monson, his former American business
partner in a Thailand-based cable-television
venture that Thaksin himself eventually listed on
the Stock Exchange of Thailand. The court has
scheduled a total of six hearings for September
and October and will decide on October 16 whether
to launch a full trial into the charges.
Opposition politicians contend that
Thaksin should also be held accountable for the
more than 2,500 extrajudicial killings that
occurred during his government's 2003 "war on
drugs" campaign, his government's admitted
complicity in the abduction and disappearance of
Thai Muslim human-rights lawyer Somchai
Neelapaijit, and his government's systematic
subversion and intimidation of the local media,
which are protected from political intervention by
the 1997 constitution.
The Foundation for
Consumers filed a lawsuit with the Central
Administrative Court on Thursday against Thaksin
for his role in issuing executive decrees that
paved the way for the controversial November 2001
partial privatization of oil and gas giant PTT
Plc, which sold out in less than a minute and saw
relatives of senior Thai Rak Thai members secure
large allotments of the listing while many retail
investors went empty-handed. PTT, which has a
monopoly on natural-gas distribution in Thailand,
listed at 35 baht per share and now trades at 238
baht (US$6.33 at the current exchange rate).
Significantly, Thaksin's mounting legal
troubles come in the wake of His Majesty King
Bhumibol Adulyadej's call on April 25 for senior
Thai judges to find a legal solution to the
country's political crisis. Thailand's judiciary
has demonstrated a strong independent streak since
then. This has been manifested in the
Constitutional Court's decision to nullify the
results of the April 2 general elections because
of irregularities, and the more explosive Criminal
Court decision in late July to imprison three
election commissioners, widely viewed as Thaksin
allies, for four years for their role in
mishandling the nullified polls. At the time,
Thaksin said he was "shocked" by the decision.
Some Bangkok-based legal scholars,
requesting anonymity, contend that a conviction in
any one of the cases against Thaksin and/or his
political party could be enough to end his
political career and possibly even drive him and
his family into self-imposed exile. As the legal
wheels turn, Thaksin, once politically
unassailable, now seems highly vulnerable.
To be sure, Thaksin has faced legal
troubles before and emerged unscathed. The
National Counter Corruption Commission in December
2000 ruled that Thaksin had improperly concealed
his assets by enlisting shares in the
communications companies he founded in the names
of his domestic servants. The Constitutional Court
famously overturned that conviction in August 2001
in a highly controversial 8-7 verdict, which,
unusually, was judged on both legal and political
merits and saw Thaksin appoint a new judge to the
court while the case was being heard.
Now,
as then, Thaksin's supporters predict a prolonged
period of political, economic and even social
turmoil if the courts rule against him.
Supavud Saicheua, a former personal
adviser to Thaksin and now head of research at
Bangkok's Phatra Securities, Thailand's leading
investment bank, warned in a recent report titled
"Beware Unintended Consequences" that if the
investigation into the Shinawatra family's sale of
the Shin Corp to Temasek Holdings finds they
contravened Thai laws governing the use of local
nominees on behalf of foreign investors, it would
deter future foreign direct investment in
Thailand.
He cites two examples from the
1990s where Thai leaders retroactively amended
laws and allowed transactions that had already
been ruled illegal by Thai courts to proceed.
Supavud suggests that, for the sake of future
foreign investments, a similar compromise be
reached in the Temasek-Shin Corp deal.
In
an earlier research note, the prominent economist
also ventured that a ruling against Thai Rak Thai
for electoral fraud would be "illogical".
Whose rule of law? The noisy
anti-government street protests that last year and
early this year rocked Thaksin's government have
notably gone quiet since King Bhumibol in April
called on senior Thai judges to resolve the
country's political crisis. Nonetheless, the
political temperature has risen dramatically in
recent weeks - coincident with the legal
proceedings and investigations against Thaksin,
his political party and his family.
Thaksin made big waves in late June when
he vaguely referred to "charismatic people outside
the constitution working to impose changes" and
said his "opponents are now attempting various
extra-constitutional tactics to co-opt the will of
the people". He made similar shadowy references in
an April letter addressed to US President George W
Bush, in which he tried to explain to his US ally
that Thai democracy was under unconstitutional
threat.
Many media outlets interpreted
Thaksin's jab as being directed at King Bhumibol's
top adviser, Privy Council chairman Prem
Tinsulanonda - though the embattled premier later
denied that Prem was the charismatic figure he had
in mind. Prem soon thereafter traded in his
civilian clothes for his old military garb to
administer a speech that reminded cadets that they
first serve King Bhumibol, not elected
politicians.
Prem later lent his moral
authority to a sweeping, surprise military shakeup
ordered by army commander Sonthi Boonyaratglin,
which acted to remove many known Thaksin loyalists
from positions of authority inside the army's 1st
Division, which crucially during times of
political crisis is charged with overseeing
Bangkok's security.
Bangkok-based security
analysts and a senior Western diplomat who spoke
with Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity
interpreted the move as a preemptive strike
against any designs Thaksin may have had on
declaring a state of emergency and suspending the
legal proceedings now under way against him. The
move, they say, also dispelled any lingering
doubts about where the top brass's ultimate
loyalty lies - with the monarch.
Still,
the political rumblings and high-stakes maneuvers
continue. A whopping 49% of Bangkok residents
considered that last week's car-bomb assassination
plot against Thaksin by a rogue military officer
was in reality a government-orchestrated hoax,
according to a recent Bangkok University poll.
Thaksin and his supporters have spun the
murky incident as justification for imposing
greater security measures around the premier,
raising speculation that another alleged attempt
on Thaksin's life, real or imagined, would give
him the pretext to declare a state of emergency,
suspend civil liberties and consolidate his
slipping political power through force rather than
the ballot box.
The hypothetical question,
of course, is whether top military commanders
would obey Thaksin's orders in his politically
wounded state. Thailand's armed forces have come
great distances in rehabilitating their public
image since the 1991 coup and 1992 crackdown on
pro-democracy demonstrators. Bangkok's elite and
their associated protest groups now favorably view
the armed forces as King Bhumibol's last line of
defense against any potential challenge to his
authority.
Some Bangkok-based security
analysts even contend that if respected former or
current military leaders preemptively moved
against Thaksin - and King Bhumibol did not
publicly demur - the move would be welcomed by a
large cross-section of Bangkok's educated elite
and middle classes, who now widely view Thaksin as
an even bigger threat to the future of Thai
democracy.
Thaksin and his supporters
contend that upcoming democratic polls should
serve to resolve past conflicts and pave the way
toward national reconciliation. If the polls
proceed as planned, political analysts predict his
Thai Rak Thai party would notch another landslide
victory, winning about 300 of the possible 500
parliamentary seats, based on his party's
still-strong popularity in the country's northern
and northeastern regions.
A newly elected
Thai Rak Thai-led government would, perhaps
ironically, oversee a 12-18-month process of
political reform, where a cross-section of elites,
academics, activists and opposition politicians
would push constitutional amendments aimed at
legally diminishing the party's dominance over
politics and implementing new, stronger checks and
balances on the executive branch.
However,
it's just as likely that next month's polls will
perpetuate, and even accentuate, the current
political conflict that is centered on Thaksin's
strong and divisive style of governance. Thaksin's
critics remain adamant that he first step down
from power and answer their allegations of massive
corruption, abuse of power and the particularly
potent charge of disloyalty to the throne - all
charges Thaksin has persistently denied.
Even if Thai courts take the extraordinary
step of convicting Thaksin, his political party,
or possibly even his family members, on any of the
said charges, it's not altogether clear that
Thailand's democratically elected premier will bow
out without a fight.
Shawn W
Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia
editor.
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