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Double legal standards jeopardize Thailand

Sat, 25/04/2009 - 16:08

Awzar Thi

"We want to complain about a missing husband. He left home to join the Red Shirts and went missing." "He went missing on the day the army broke up the mob?" "No. On the day the police summoned him."

At a meeting of lawyers and jurists in Hong Kong this week a participant from Thailand identified the key issue for her country’s legal system as political control of the judiciary. Her statement was remarkable not because it revealed something that other participants didn’t already know, but because not long ago few professionals from Thailand willingly admitted that their laws and courts operate according to double standards. Now, few can deny it.

The double standards have been all too apparent this month.

Following protests that forced leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and partner countries to flee from a summit venue in Pattaya, the incumbent prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, imposed a state of emergency as blockades and violence spread in Bangkok. The army deployed. A court promptlyissued arrest warrants for the red-shirted demonstrators’ leaders. Some were quickly rounded up and detained, while others went into hiding.

By contrast, the yellow shirts that took over Government House and two international airports for an extended period last year were allowed to stay put until the government was forced out through a court ruling on a narrow question under the army-imposed 2007 Constitution. No soldiers came to eject them. The legal process took weeks to move against the organizers. When the new prime minister was questioned on the authorities’ inactivity he disingenuously said that it was a matter for the police, not him. The criminal inquiries have been repeatedly postponed and at no time have the yellow shirts’ leaders been held in custody. One of them, businessman Sondhi Limthongkul, last week survived a shooting attack on his car.

Although the ousted Thaksin Shinawatra regime undermined the work of the upper courts, it was the 2006 military coup that brought them back firmly and openly under executive control. The coup leaders shut down a senior court, appointed a tribunal in its stead, had it go after the former premier, declared themselves immune from prosecution and proclaimed all their orders lawful. After voters re-elected Thaksin allies to the lower house of parliament (top judges are now responsible for the upper), it took two absurd legal cases against successive prime ministers for the coup-makers to finally get a government after their own heart, rather than one that the electorate wanted. The judges responsible for the verdicts included men who owed their jobs to the generals.

The double legal standards in the handling of rival political camps have done nothing to diminish the likelihood of further bloodshed and uncertainty in the near future. On the contrary, the obvious differences in how the yellow shirts and red shirts have been treated will only encourage government opponents to resort to increasingly extralegal means to get their way. Both sides and their backers have the aptitude and means for violence. Thanks to the politicizing of Thailand’s courts, now they have more appetite for it too.





Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/hotline/#4094529694856137666

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"If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you "

baldrick

irony being that if the orders came from where the protesters and mr't' intimate they did , well the orders were probably lawful

Whiteshiva

Who's husband? What is his name and where is he from?

Isn't it funny how all these hundreds of redshirts (actually yellowshirts in disguise trying to give the redshirts a bad name according to some people here) killed or missing never seem to have a name........

Rural Surin

Such things do happen, don't they?

Mid

slowly but surely ........................

seems a few here where a little to quick to deny .

.

Panda

Yes, the double standards of law in Thailand are glaringly obvious.

So obvious in fact that it is perfectly clear the judiciary is but another corrupt arm of the elite ruling class whose primary function is not to deliver "blind justice" in a fair and equitable manner, but rather to protect their wealthy masters while disenfranchising the poor majority through their abuse of power.

The whole situation is quite a blatant scam. But then again Thailand has always been that way as long as I have known it. This whole attitude of lieing without conscience and blatant corruption seems to permeate Thai society from top to bottom. I guess thats what the Thais mean when they tell us farangs we dont understand how things are done in Thailand. The really scary part is that the Thais actually believe being crooked, deceptive and corrupt is the smart thing to do. Their corrupt mindset is probably the one biggest factor holding the country back from ever reaching its full potential. Yet few Thais would realize this. They are just stuck in their own little xenophobic world and think their way is the only way. Sad really. I guess thats the reason why the ruling class dont want the peasants to get educated. Got to happen sooner or later though.

And of course while Kasit (of airport terrorist siege fame) is off around the world proclaiming how law and order must prevail in Thailand, the rest of the world doesn't really give a shit so long as the country is politically stable and continues to provide cheap labour without too many human rights abuses.

Thailand is a bubble of corruption getting ready to burst, -- eventually. But maybe not in this coming decade. Only when sufficient numbers of the people themselves reject corruption and deception as honourable and respectable practices will the people of Thailand be released from the yoke of oppression by the elite ruling class. It really up to the people. A few have the fire in their belly now, but not nearly enough to bring about revolutionary change. Perhaps when Elvis bows out it will trigger a change?

dasnan

Though there are no good guys in Thai politics, one thing Thaksin did do was light the fuse -- the rural poor finally got some attention from the government and they thought that was marvelous. They want more.

The present PM says his government will keep Thaksin programs for the poor that worked, but one has a hard time imagining any type of real change coming from the old elite in Bangkok. It won't be too much longer before the shield behind which they hide is no longer there, and all hell could break loose.

I'm sure all those wealthy Sino-Thais have their backup homes in Hong Kong, the States and England ready. I hope they're required to put them in use soon. Their spoled rotten na-rak kids might have a hard time of it, though, outside the privileged, strange and shallow world they live in now.

I attended a Songkran gathering in Beijing this year organized by a Thai student association and was again struck by the insular and inbred character of the Thai culture. The Thai kids mind their P's and Q's around the Chinese, but they don't like it; it probably also frightens them a bit to a see a nation with great, if raw, power, not the banana republic they come from. They were big ducks in a little pond before; here they're considered some type of Chinese ethnic minority group, which is exactly what they are.

Repubblicano

Indeed it's a shame the witnesses do not come up with their names and addresses so the Police can easily dispose of them ....

Spin

There it is, right there, spelled out in plain English for all to see. Undisputable.