Will tough anti-graft action work for or against us?

Simply put, Article 111 will either blow away crooked politicians or explode in the faces of its own architects (or masterminds, if you like). Fighting corruption is not easy. It’s a lot harder still when the battle is perceived as a conspiracy designed to undermine democracy. Article 111 is intended to change Thailand, all people agree on that. What they can’t form a consensus on is whether the change will be 

for the better or the worse.

Article 111 has been finalised, meaning you would have to kill the entire charter draft to block it. The draft can be disposed of if it’s rejected by the military-installed political reform assembly or by the Thai public in a subsequent referendum. The bomb has begun ticking, so to speak.

Critics who feel Article 111 is biased say it will definitely rule out a return to politics for Thaksin. As for Yingluck, who was recently impeached by the post-coup interim legislature, she will be banned for life, too, and most controversy will be focused on her. Argument in her favour will be louder and clearer than that backing her big brother.

Court verdicts against Thaksin came when Thailand was not under military rule. The seizure of his assets as well as the guilty verdict concerning the Ratchadaphisek land grab were effected under the normal checks and balances. In fact, the ruling that found Thaksin guilty of illegally helping his ex-wife buy the Ratchadaphisek land came when his political party was running the government.

Yingluck was impeached by a military-installed legislature. If she is politically banned for life because of that, debate will never end. One could, of course, ask whether a democratically elected Parliament would have impeached her for the controversial rice scheme, but that, essentially, is the argument at the crux of the Thai divide in the first place. In short, there will be no clear-cut winner in the debate. Thaksin’s cases are primarily legal affairs, meaning legal principles form basis of arguments. The coup made Yingluck’s impeachment more political than legal.

I like Article 111. Of course, charges of showing prejudice towards Thaksin and Yingluck will loom large, but how else can we deter or scare off future crooks? Thailand’s chicken-and-egg problem has to end somehow, but that end is unlikely to come as long as “democracy” remains powerless to forge “clean” governance. A life-long ban might not be a magic pill, but it can serve as a strong deterrent. A climate of fear is necessary where combating corruption is concerned. 

We will be hearing a lot of this word “injustice”. Plenty of people will say that no justice can come out of “injustice” or “bias” or “double standards”. But let’s refresh our memory. Thailand’s political crisis has been dragging on for so long that some may have forgotten there was a time when the Democrat Party’s most powerful man, the late Sanan Kachornprasart, was banned from politics for five years for a Bt15 million debt that he couldn’t clarify. A Bangkok governor from the Democrat Party quit after corruption charges tainted a project that he supervised.

Nowadays, the application or enforcement of the law might be debatable. However, if we are to conclude that injustice started it all, the first major victim of “biased” checks and balances must have been Sanan, not those on the other side of the political divide. 

We need the chopping block back – and one that doesn’t shy away from or blunt its blade for popular or powerful politicians. Democracy has to prove that it can handle its rotten apples by itself, otherwise “the others” will step up and, rightly or wrongly, put away elected officials suspected of graft. Without an effective anti-corruption mechanism, Thailand’s democracy will never be strong or deep-rooted.

Countries that have successfully reined in public corruption have one thing in common. That is, the political will of those in power, who don’t hesitate to punish their own people or demonstrate ultimate responsibility themselves by resigning from their own high positions.

In a true democracy, voters don’t “rule” whether a politician is corrupt or not, because evidence or counter-evidence can be fabricated, blurred, distorted, amplified and politicised in the process. That’s why we need the courts of law, and that’s why the argument that a bunch of judges should never override public opinion does more harm than good to democracy’s fundamental values.