How a modern-day impeachment hearing can be done

Before we delve into the issue of “immunity”, a Wikipedia-style website on Yingluck’s impeachment case is a great idea for several reasons. First off, we won’t have to read two reports – pro-Yingluck and anti-Yingluck – to discover the real facts behind the interim legislature’s rhetoric. Second, with the help of highly effective social media investigators, such a website will tell us whether the National Anti-Corruption Commission is being vague, biased and victimising Yingluck Shinawatra with unfounded allegations, or whether she is guilty as sin and being evasive. Information can be verified in a heartbeat via the social media, and so can distortion.

Third, the information won’t go anywhere and can’t fade with time or be manipulated. Of course, the same information could instead be presented to the interim Parliament, but then it would get blurry along the way, and three months from now anybody could say anything about it. Fourth, the website would dispel charges of a summary, coup-inspired process, as it would purely become the Anti-Corruption Commission’s argument against hers.

Last but not least, we can create a history. Remember when people were being critical of Wikipedia? Today, researchers – whether amateur or professional – can’t live without it. Let’s have an online political trial where all truths are laid bare. Let’s have a place where the pro-Yingluck camp can point to when somebody says the rice pledging scheme caused staggering losses and spawned corruption. Or that her opponents can rely on when somebody says she was an innocent victim of a political conspiracy.

The easy part is that the problems in the rice scheme are not ideological. They are mathematical, so a lot of the argument doing the rounds can be ditched. The NACC can say her government violated budgetary principles and show how it was done. It can say the losses were this big, and here are the official figures as they appeared in such and such. It can detail alleged corruption, provide evidence and challenge the defendant to rebut it.

The defence, on the other hand, can say that all budgetary rules were strictly observed, and here’s the evidence. It can say losses were small and outweighed by benefits and here are the figures to show it. It can say photos or reports concerning overstocking and rotten rice were overblown or fabricated and here’s the proof.

Will such a website have legal immunity like Parliament? It’s the key question, but we can tackle this issue if we really want to do it. This is a mammoth political case, and unless everything is made crystal clear for all to see, the national strife will linger or even worsen. Surely some exemptions can be made, can’t they? The military junta has abolished the Constitution to start with, so what’s so hard about guarding a website against defamation suits?

As for the defence, such a website is probably as close to a democratic trial as it can get. Most of all, the ruling by the interim legislature might not be as important as what appears on the website. If the National Legislative Assembly cannot give Yingluck Shinawatra the “justice” that she asked for repeatedly last Friday, perhaps such a website will.

Here are some possible guidelines. Everybody in the world must be able to read the content. Access to editing must be limited, but this doesn’t mean nothing can be argued. Thanks to today’s information technology, any credible argument will find its way to the general public.