Nothing wrong with ruling on Jatuporn

In fact the top court made no decision at all, it just reviewed what the judiciary had already decided and then applied those facts to the highest law of the land. It was a very straight-forward and clear legal confirmation, beyond any doubt or quibble. 

What Jatuporn and the Red Shirts don’t seem to understand is that it wasn’t the Constitution Court that denied Jatuporn bail, but rather the local Criminal Court when he applied for bail a year ago. It was the Criminal Court that decided that, for reasons it stated very clearly at the time: Jatuporn was a risk and therefore not eligible for release, even to vote. In its judgement [recently] the top court merely acknowledged the lower court’s decision, looked carefully at what the Constitution says about the obligation of a citizen who wants to stand as an MP, and 

decided that Jatuporn did not qualify. 7-1.

As His Majesty the King so simply and eloquently stressed in one of his last speeches to the Thai people: If you don’t trust your courts, you will fail. The Constitution Court did that – trusted the Criminal Court. Had it handed down a ruling in favour of Jatuporn it would have had to say that either the Criminal Court was “unjust” in its previous ruling or, even more destructively, that the Constitution itself was “unjust.”  And that’s a very steep slope to perdition.

Like the Ratchadaphisek land decision – a very clear-cut, simple, transparent case. Like every other Constitution in the world, the Thai Constitution states unequivocally that a government leader cannot permit his or her family to enter into a financial contract with the government. The court’s decision was not based on any suggestion of corruption or even of collusion, just on that one simple fact, permission, and the document proving that that permission was indeed given is available for anybody to verify.

In actual fact, it’s not the Ratchadaphisek decision that the Phue Thai and the red shirts challenge as “unjust,” but rather the fact that the case got to court at all. They feel that just trying Thaksin was “unjust,” even when the evidence was so straightforward, and the sentence so appropriate.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, neither the Phue Thai party nor the red shirts – what is more Thaksin Shinawatra himself – have ever challenged the Supreme Court’s “hidden assets” decision that acquitted the latter in 2001, even though the TRCT has called that decision “illegal”. Yes, and gone to some length to explain why. 

OK, “illegal,” one might argue, but that’s not the same thing as “unjust”. I myself could accept 

that argument because I know just how fragile the rule of law is in all human activities, and I would want to encourage citizens to trust their judges at all times, not to denigrate them. Indeed, it’s trust itself that builds trustworthiness in a society.

The courage on the part of the Constitution Court to uphold the EC’s position with regard to Jatuporn’s status is indeed a measure of the strength and probity of Thailand’s judiciary even in the face of so much disinformation, hostility and even potential violence.

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai