Court president faces revolt over law amendment move

The NLA took the petition into consideration and asked the judges to settle internal disputes first before approaching the NLA.

Of the 200 judges in the country’s administrative courts, the 101 who signed the petition said they knew nothing about the idea to amend Administrative Court law. They said they did not even know who had proposed the amendment to the NLA.

The draft was prepared by court president Hasawut, who also proposed the amendment to the NLA.

The main aim in amending the law is to make the Administrative Court’s judicial committee more independent from intervention by outsiders, an official who supported the draft said.

The law needed to be rewritten, he said, to guarantee independence of the judicial committee because it lacks protection under the 2007 Constitution, which was annulled after the coup, he said.

Technically, many clauses of the law of the Administrative Court are connected to the now-defunct constitution. In the current situation, it would be very problematic to apply the law to many matters. The number of judicial panel members in the court, for instance, was cut from 13 to seven, as many members from the Senate had to quit after the 2007 charter was abrogated. Thailand now has no Senate.

Judges who support the amendment say it is better to rewrite the law of the Administrative Court to be a stand-alone law, rather than an organic law of the constitution, as in Thailand coups have often led to the constitution being annulled.

Furthermore, the amendment guaranteeing the judicial committee’s independence was an urgent matter for the court president, as a reshuffle of judges throughout the country is expected soon.

The draft of the amendment would save the judicial committee from outsiders intervening in the reshuffle, the official said.

However, the amendment proposal has come under scrutiny amid doubts on whether Hasawut may have a hidden agenda to cover his problems from a recent scandal when the court’s secretary sent a note to the national police chief allegedly seeking to promote a policeman close to Hasawut.

Some judges, who have signed the petition, have serious concerns about the amendment as they claim it was proposed without their knowledge. They have the right to know the contents of the amendment and want to have some input, as it has implications that would affect the structure of the court and all judges.

However, another official said the 101 judges were supposed to know the content as the amendment proposal had been circulated and an in-house opinion poll had suggested that 91.6 per cent of judges in the court agreed with it.