Not a single shot has been fired by the Thai military since generals overthrew a democratically elected government in May last year. Instead, they have depended on the force of paperwork, reams of it, to bring their opponents under control.
Hundreds of people have been summoned and forced to sign documents that allow the junta to seize their assets if they become involved with “any political movement.”
Stacks of case files clutter the headquarters of the Thai National Anti-Corruption Commission, which is pursuing at least seven legal cases against the former government and threatening legal action against hundreds of former members of parliament overthrown in the coup.
Illustration: Kevin Sheu
“I am destroying the patronage system,” Thai National Anti-Corruption Commission anti-graft commissioner Vicha Mahakul said. “We are setting an example about ethical conduct.”
Others might call it death by paperwork, an effort by the junta to bury the political opposition in endless legal cases, with the courts and the Thai parliament applying a flexible, through-the-looking-glass interpretation of the law.
The junta’s law is whatever it decrees. About 269 former members of parliament overthrown in the coup are being threatened with legal action by Vicha’s office, proceedings that seem to have shaky legal standing since the system that politicians are accused of violating — the constitution — was nullified by the generals when they seized power.
Vicha’s office also led the prosecution of former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra. The military’s handpicked legislature impeached her retroactively last month, banning her from politics for five years.
Civilians who defy the junta are tried in military courts with no possibility of appeal.
The military has not said when it plans to relinquish power. However, before any return to democratic rule, the generals and their allies in the Thai elite are seeking to legally dismantle the most popular political movement in modern Thai history, a new-money political machine founded by cellphone tycoon and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra — who challenged the old-money elites.
The prosecution of the leaders of the political movement, which has won every election since 2001, has led to deep cynicism about the long-term consequences of military rule, especially the effects on the nation’s legal system. The military said it staged a coup to maintain civil peace and order.
“They are burning the whole forest to catch one mouse,” said former Rak Thailand Party leader Chuwit Kamolvisit, who is neither in the Thaksin camp nor allied with the establishment powers. “The army is not sincere in cracking down on corruption. If they really wanted to tackle corruption, why are they only destroying one camp? There is corruption on both sides.”
There is dissension even within the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which since the coup has become a sort of prosecutor in chief.
Commission adviser Somlak Judkrabuanphol, who is also a law professor and a former Supreme Court judge, said political divisions have infected the courts to the point of a “pandemic in the judiciary.”
“The distortion of the law is worse than a gun pointed at you,” she said in an interview. “The distortion of the law affects everyone in the nation. Every citizen relies on the law.”
Somlak said she was disturbed by the decision of a criminal court last year to drop murder charges against former Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his deputy. Abhisit was charged with authorizing the military to use weapons of war against protesters in 2010. More than 90 people were killed during the violence.
“I think this is outrageous,” she said. “The court suddenly dropped the case — they didn’t even investigate.”
Somlak said she also opposed the impeachment of Yingluck. The Thai National Legislative Assembly did not have the authority to impeach her, she said. The junta has also not fully explained how a person who is no longer in power can be impeached.
Somlak, 74, is no insurgent. However, she said the military could interpret her comments as threatening and fears that she, too, could be summoned by soldiers.
Vicha, whose office is in the same building as Somlak’s, said he is also fearful — of attacks by supporters of the Thaksin political movement, the so-called red shirts.
He changes cars every day, he said in the interview. The military, he said, “cannot protect me all of the time.”
He rejects the assertion made by the US Department of State and critics of the junta that the impeachment of Yingluck and the prosecution of her movement was politically driven.
Vicha has previously expressed his skepticism of democracy in Thailand, once calling elections “evil.”
“We are trying to show people that elections are not the only part of the democratic system,” he said in the interview in his office on the outskirts of Bangkok. “You must have people of good faith and people of ethical and good conduct.”
Yingluck’s government “thought about their own interests first, not the interests of the people or the public interest,” he added.
However, in a nation where graft is endemic, Vicha’s caseload seems politically lopsided. No investigation for unusual wealth has been conducted into the Thai chief of police, whose public disclosure documents showed total assets of US$11 million, or his deputy, who claimed assets of US$30 million.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha declared US$4 million in assets, including the equivalent of US$1.84 million in cash, five cars, two Patek Philippe watches, three Rolexes and jewelry worth more than US$200,000. Vicha said there were no immediate plans to investigate.
When asked to list the cases he considers priorities, Vicha mentioned two, including the awarding of US$220,000 in compensation to the families of protesters and bystanders killed during the 2010 military crackdown. Vicha said he was investigating whether proper procedures were followed in the disbursement of the compensation.
He rejected the argument that procedural lapses in compensation to the bereaved would seem to be a minor offense in a nation where the military last year abolished the constitution and removed nearly every elected official from office.
“There are regulations for these payments,” he said. “There are laws.”
For critics of Vicha and the coup, the eight months of military rule have failed to mend rifts in society and might have worsened prospects for national reconciliation.
However, military rule has also disappointed some members of the political establishment who saw the coup as an opportunity to strengthen the rule of law.
“There were people who thought we had a genuine chance for reform,” said former Thai finance minister Korn Chatikavanij, who is a senior member of the Democrat Party, which opposed the Yingluck government. “They were daydreaming. There are no real reforms going on.”
Korn said that Thailand needs a leader “from outside the system who is genuinely committed to breaking up the system,” citing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indonesian President Joko Widodo as examples.
“Unless you break up the system,” Korn said, “we won’t be truly competitive and transparent.”
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