Welcome to nominees' paradise

Don’t worry. It’ll work 90 per cent of the time. When that nominee has a problem, you can either say it has nothing to do with you, or insist that as everybody is doing it, picking on you is a crying shame. Breaking the law and gaining sympathy for doing so: a win-win situation. 

Welcome to Thailand, the world’s capital of nominees. They roam the political landscape, flood the stock market and infiltrate all business transactions known to man. An ongoing controversy involving a giant TV station has the use of a nominee at its centre. Our chronic political crisis, which is still threatening to tear the country apart, stemmed from the countless and dizzying deployment of nominees.

That Thailand is wrecked by corruption and at the same time infested with nominees can’t be a coincidence. Corruption is not just about blatantly violating the laws, but also about using tricks to get around them. Nominees come into existence to exploit legal loopholes or defy the will of the law or the Constitution. When the rules are there to be skirted, we can kiss “ethics” – the foundation of a transparent society – goodbye.

In Thailand, when someone insists they are not violating the Constitution, it usually only means that no “written” rule has been broken. Everyone is afraid to mention the “constitutional will”, because if they really became something sacred, a lot of contracts, concessions, bids and transactions (not to mention political posts) would be blown away. Moreover, respect for the “constitutional will” would threaten the sympathy that greets their “no law was broken” claims.

What are the constitutional wills concerning the current digital-analog TV debacle? The key word is “liberalisation”. The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission was constitutionally set up and empowered to enforce that constitutional goal. The idea was that broadcasting and telecom frequencies are national assets – in other words, belong to all Thai people – so there mustn’t be a monopoly at the expense of TV viewers’ or telecom users’ interests.

“Liberalisation” means something has got to give, simply because the term means an end of monopoly. When “monopoly” means a lot of money for those who monopolise, liberalisation will reduce their advantages, for the key idea is to bring other players into the picture to create a more level playing field.

There’s no use in debating who “broke the laws”. It will get that giant TV channel and the regulators nowhere. The ultimate question both sides must ask themselves is whether the constitutional will to liberalise the Thai broadcasting industry is being respected. If the answer is “No”, then the constitutional will must have hit a snag, in which case we can start looking for the villains.

Nominees can torpedo liberalisation. The former represents the status quo while the latter means creating as much competition as possible. In ordinary businesses, the use of nominees can distort a company’s financial and other realities, affecting small-time shareholders and customers alike. When “national assets” are concerned, nominees help keep the unwanted status quo on a grand scale and the real “losers” or “victims” are those the Constitution seek to protect.

Monopolies are funny. They can enrich you beyond your wildest dreams, but they will also fool you if they go on for long enough. They give you a false sense of ownership, entitlement, invincibility or omnipresence. And nominees are the major tool used to prolong that misconception.

But here’s the thing: omnipresence does not sit well with begging for sympathy. So, take your pick. If you want to use a nominee to keep some questionable advantages, go ahead and do it and good luck. But never ever confuse the public by seeking their understanding. You can’t be invincible and portray yourself as a victim at the same time. 

Good news for the status quo is that, as Thailand is a nominees’ paradise, no matter how unscrupulous a scheme is, it’s likely to succeed. From condominium booking to naming political officeholders, the use of nominees has been increasingly necessary. It requires no expertise in business management or political science to determine whether the trend leads to increased or decreased transparency.

Thais are close to perfecting the art of making nominees legitimate – or making them irreplaceable, at least. Cracking down on a nominee may now be equivalent to snatching one strut from a house of cards. And that house of cards has become very big – perhaps simply too big to fall – in the opinion of many people.