Thaksin Verdict: Only in Thailand by Phairath Khampha 34 August 2001 Amazing Thailand is a compendium of dazzling inconsistencies, flatout contradictions and dizzying doubletalk. Thailand's Constitution Court voted on August 3, 2001 in a knife-edge decision to clear Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of graft charges, ending months of uncertainty and letting him stay in power. Critics who have bemoaned the Thaksin share transfer episode and how it ended up simply fail to look at the bright side of things. How Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s family handled the controversial stock transfers, how he defended himself in the Constitution Court, the reasoning used by the court in acquitting him and the aftermath of the historic trial represent unique characteristics of Thailand. This case alone will send book publishers and researchers on business, society, law and the Constitution scrambling to update their works. Here’s some information that hopefully could make their jobs easier: Only in Thailand . . . can a person escape the clutches of the law by claiming he or she knows nothing about it. Only in Thailand . . . do judges receive a case, spend months conducting a trial, and then throw it out on grounds that they should not have accepted the case in the first place, but only after considerable negotiations with the accused to fix a price to be found innocent. Only in Thailand . . . can the Constitution grow to the thickness of a telephone directory in order to prevent future disputes and hairsplitting interpretations. Only in Thailand . . . can a spouse transfer large portions of a partner’s shares to family servants for unknown reasons without the other’s knowledge. If the spouse dies suddenly, do they take this secret to the grave and the “nominees” will have the money for life? Only in Thailand . . . can such business management still be successful. In all other countries the business would fail--unless the so-called lack of knowlege was not so unknown. Only in Thailand . . . can someone purchase a golf course under another’s name, boast about it being a “best buy” on a television talk programme, inexplicably omit the huge property in an official list of assets and then tell a court he did not know about the possession. Only in Thailand . . . are the media warned by police for publishing speculative reports on the fate of a prime minister’s trial while the government is uncorking the champagne three hours before the verdict is announced. Only in Thailand . . . can we deflect the blame to the media after badmouthing the court. Only in Thailand . . . can such an ignorant person (must be ignorant-he/she admitted it in court), fitting the above, become the prime minister of the country. While the controversy over the Thaksin case was far from running its course, Thailand was already being judged by the international court of opinion. Put simply, the whole episode astounded people abroad and had constitutional experts scouring the books for anything remotely similar to the Thaksin decision. In the meantime, the international media was keeping a careful eye on the pressures being brought to bear on the local media by the Thaksin machine. Major world media groups had in recent times lauded Thailand for its efforts to create a free and fair press that has served as a model for the emerging economies of Southeast Asia. But local news people now feared that the next time such groups as the Committee to Protect Journalists issue their reports on Thailand, the country would be viewed as having slipped back to the bad old days of suppression of information under military dictators. It is something everyone in Thailand should be very concerned about. On the business front, certain people have rejoiced because their prime minister escaped prosecution and they can now make more money through him, but in the washup, there must be concerns about whether foreign investors could ever expect real justice in Thailand in the case of disputes, and fair and equable treatment at the hands of a government that already showed its desire to play favourites. It has been said already that Thailand suddenly, and without any real warning, reached a major point in its history. When Thaksin was elected, no one expected that this would happen. The Thais were all quite complacent that our well-documented march to complete democracy would continue. They were at yet another crossroad and could no longer afford that complacency.