Chief urges all sides to reconcile

Wasan made the calls as part of a speech delivered at Thammasat University’s Rangsit Campus on the topic of “Reconciliation, Justice and Democracy” on the occasion of Sanya Thammasak Day.

Wasan said that although the coalition had won a popular mandate to rule the country, it should not be corrupted by power or use its majority to force through legal amendments in an attempt to perpetuate its hold on power.

Wasan cited Adolf Hitler, Germany’s dictatorial leader of the 1930s and ’40s, as an example of one who abused a popular majority to perpetuate his power, which ultimately led to disaster for Germany. After Hitler’s party won an election, the Constitutional Court president said, it abused its majority by amending laws to preserve power, after which the German leader led his country to defeat in World War II.

Wasan said Germany now had a powerful Constitutional Court to protect the public interest, adding that Thailand’s Constitutional Court was modelled on the German one. Article 68 of Thailand’s Constitution seeks to protect the constitutional monarchy system,  he said.

But Article 68 has become a source of political conflict, leading to strong criticism of the Constitutional Court judges’ decision to proceed with a judicial review of the ongoing legislative effort to amend the article, Wasan said.

The first paragraph of Article 68 states: “No person shall exercise the rights and liberties prescribed in the Constitution to overthrow the democratic regime of government with the King as Head of the State under this Constitution, or to acquire the power to rule the country by any means that is not in accordance with the modes provided in this Constitution.”

A senator has asked the Constitutional Court to rule on whether the planned amendment, which would require that efforts by members of the public to invoke Article 68 be made only through the Office of the Attorney-General, would violate the article itself.

Wasan said Constitutional Court judges were not trying to please anyone by convening a meeting to consider the petition on the day after it was submitted; they had to do so because the petition sought an injunction suspending the ongoing legislative debate. 

Critics of the present system say there are no means for holding judges accountable to the people, but Wasan said he wondered whether the public would accept a system in which judges were elected.

If the Supreme Court president were to be appointed by politicians, he or she might become a henchman of politicians, he said.

Courts should be non-partisan agencies in order to mediate disputes, Wasan said.

He denied that the Constitutional Court was guilty of applying a double standard when it ordered the dissolution of the Thai Rak Thai, Chart Thai and Matchima Tipataya parties while sparing the Democrats. He said the Democrats faced different charges than the other parties, adding that those charges were based on different laws, so the accusation of a double standard in the Democrats’ acquittal was unfair. 

The Constitutional Court president said that in his view, the current political conflict could be traced back to 2005 when the “Muang Thai Rai Supda” (Weekly Thailand) programme was removed from a government TV channel.

Wasan said the programme was simply fulfilling its role of scrutinising the government’s policies, so after it was removed from the channel, the programme’s organisers turned to holding weekly demonstrations to check the performance of the Thai Rak Thai government.

Wasan accused the media of fanning the political conflict and said he would like to see reconciliation achieved through amnesty or any other means. 

He urged the media to tell political rivals to smile at each other and begin reconciliation talks.