October 1, 2022: Thaksin Shinawatra’s political survival following a Constitutional Court ruling in 2001 taught one side of the ideological divide the virtue of patience. Prayut Chan-o-cha’s escape this week should do the same to the other.
The court is always targeted one way or the other. Had it gone the other way yesterday, Prayut’s supporters would have slammed the judges like Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and Pita Limjaroenrat are doing now. If Thaksin had not been declared “not guilty” more than two decades ago, his fans would have bashed the court to pieces.
Thaksin was off the hook and the rest was history. Turmoil often went back to his questionable integrity and politics ever since has been plagued with allegations that Thailand’s judges are part of a conspiracy and, on the other hand, disrespect for the highest court’s verdicts are what causes trouble.
The situation is bad on many counts. It invokes extreme measures like coups and bloody uprisings in which many innocents died. It drags every corruption scandal into politics, making campaigns against graft absolutely hard. It politicizes social issues like wife/girlfriend beating or sexual assault/harassment. It deepens rifts in the Thai society every time a ruling is issued.
People doubting the “conspiracy theory” are asking why Thaksin, if he was the one to eliminate, survived the court in 2001 in spite of fairly-good evidence, and why late Sanan Kachornprasart, a very influential power broker on the other side, was found guilty just shortly earlier regarding a “false” report of debt and thus was finished politically. Did that mean the court back then was doing one half of politics a strong favour?
Thais have been taught the hard way, time and time again, what can happen when politics gets too close to “justice” and people feeling hard done by decide to cut corners. Whether the lessons can be truly learnt may be the biggest question in the country’s desperate search for a genuine political peace.
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