Should Thailand revisit share concealment case?

The head of the now-defunct “reconciliation commission” sees it as the only way to “put all the ghosts to rest”. Many people, though, may not agree with Kanit Na Nakorn’s assertion that only when Thaksin Shinawatra’s share concealment case is reopened will turbulent Thai politics achieve true peace. They consider the scandal a can of worms. Even those convinced that then-premier Thaksin is guilty as sin regard the case as being too potentially explosive to revive.

Kanit, chairman of the Truth for Reconciliation Commission when it was formed after the 2010 political violence, is not popular with Thaksin’s supporters, not least because his panel identified the share concealment controversy as a major factor behind the political divide. 

Compounding his poor relations with the Thaksin-backed Pheu Thai Party was an open letter to its government calling for extreme caution regarding unilateral reconciliatory efforts alleged to be lopsided and pro-Shinawatra.

In an interview a few days ago, Kanit said a lot about the case remains murky. In effect, he was not talking about “reviving” it, because the case has never actually gone away. 

Whether one agrees with Kanit’s proposal or not, he is right in his insistence that the share case has been hounding Thailand. It probably cracked open the political divide, which is still worsening nowadays. It has been cited as part of a “conspiracy” by Thaksin’s supporters, while his opponents see the case as “Exhibit A” of how democracy can be abused with dangerous consequences.

The case concerns Thaksin’s financial report, which all newly elected political officeholders were constitutionally required to make public for transparency’s sake. He failed to mention in that report massive amounts of his telecoms company’s shares that were being held by his family’s servants. A Constitutional Court trial sought to establish if he intentionally violated a key charter rule, an offence punishable by removal from office.

Thaksin’s defence did not seek to deny that the Shinawatra’s shares were transferred to the unlikely proxies under suspicious circumstances. It focused on saying that the Bt10-billion transfers were things of the past that Thaksin knew virtually nothing about. 

The Constitutional Court acquitted him under curious circumstances, with judges who thought the court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case counted together with those who thought Thaksin was innocent to form a controversial “Not Guilty” verdict. If the judges who thought the court did not have jurisdiction had not been included in the “Not Guilty” camp, the “Guilty” camp would have prevailed.

Many things have changed politically since that day. The Constitutional Court, cheered by Thaksin’s supporters for the acquittal, morphed into “a big part of a conspiracy” to uproot the Shinawatras’ “control” of Thailand. In fact, the judiciary as a whole is accused of conspiring against them. Did the judges do the right thing when they “acquitted” Thaksin? That question has become academic, because Thailand has reached a point where its judges “never do the right thing”.

But Kanit’s proposal should be seriously considered. The share concealment case concerns legal, constitutional and democratic principles. Most of all, it concerns something that happened “before” everything in Thailand was blurred by political prejudices. And it’s not a complex case. There are just a few simple questions to answer: Was it wrong to transfer the shares? Did Thaksin know about the Bt10-billion transfer? If he did, was it wrong under the constitution of that time? If he didn’t, but the people closest to him did, should he be implicated too?

Yes, it’s a can of worms. No, the can is not closed. Maybe it’s best to clean it up and shut it down for good.