The slow, bendable arm of the law

There are concerns of great consequence before the public – “suspicious” clauses in the draft constitution that seem to belittle democracy, a senior monk’s alleged fondness for expensive goods threatening to further destabilise Thai Buddhism – and yet the masses commonly disregard such matters. They’re part of the grand pageant of politics, mere shifts of power to and fro.

Of far more concern to the average citizen, and perhaps rightly so, is the never-ending stream of criminal cases in which “people of influence” – meaning the wealthy and the well connected – are clearly guilty of wrongdoing and yet not prosecuted. Trust in government and the belief in religion are nothing compared to the crisis of faith the public is suffering when it comes to the police and the courts.

Most recently there was a road accident in Ayutthaya in which the driver of a luxury car crashed into the back of another passenger vehicle, which burst into flames, killing the two occupants, both undergraduates. Only after several days did the police finally charge driver Jenpop Weeraporn – with reckless driving, drunk driving and resisting arrest.

The same day this newspaper reported that the police and the father of the driver had apologised to the families of the victims, we carried another, similar story that’s painfully familiar to the public. A woman from a prominent family, convicted of manslaughter in the deaths of nine people on a Bangkok highway in 2010, had violated the terms of her four-year probation – she is required to do 48 hours of community service per year, and yet has done never done any.

In the Ayutthaya case, once again, the police were initially reluctant to enforce the law. The driver was not even subjected to a blood-alcohol test. One of the investigating officers said, by way of an excuse, he hadn’t “smelled” alcohol on the driver’s breath, and anyway the driver had sustained injury, as if that negated the need for establishing his guilt or innocence. 

It is woeful enough that Thailand ranks second on the list of the world’s worst countries in terms of traffic fatalities. If that fact is combined with lax enforcement of the rules of the road, our reputation suffers all the more. Our constitution, no matter how often it’s revised, is surely always going to contain this clause: “All are equal under the law.” Such does not appear to be the case in these terrible accidents, in which the rules are bent to accommodate people of wealth and influence. Investigations proceed at a snail’s place, perhaps in the hope that the public will forget. But the public will not forget.

We have not forgotten Vorayudh Yoovidhya, heir to a family fortune, who in 2012 struck and killed a policeman in Bangkok and fled the scene. We have not forgotten Orachorn Thephasadin na Ayudhya, who was 16 and not licensed to drive when she struck a van full of people, killing nine of them. And we have not forgotten Kanpitak Pachimsawat, who rammed his luxury car into a bus stop in 2007, killing one person and injuring two others. He at least has gone to jail, albeit briefly, and only after resisting conviction all the way to the Supreme Court. 

This matter of the punishment, if applied at all, being out of proportion to the crime is another painful facet in the widespread perception that there is one law book for the privileged and another for the rest of us. In developed countries, whose ranks Thailand aspires to join, there is no such disparity. Our country is keen on reform at the moment, and while the military government’s efforts in that respect have faltered, inequality in the eyes of the law remains all too obvious a target. Privilege allowed the few and denied the masses foments political strife. In this case, for a change, it isn’t corrupt politicians at fault but rather a fundamental flaw in our social structure that is unfairly tipping the scales of justice.

“Jails are for the poor,” the rich man says. And immunity from prosecution is the rich man’s right. True democracy, with the proper checks and balances in place to guard against corruption, handily makes nonsense of all this.