Over the last several days there has been a bit of a heated something about giving the convicted criminal Thaksin Shinawatra access to a microphone of sort. In what looks like a good idea to Thaksin supporters, may actually turn out to be reverse Russian roulette with only one empty chamber in the six shooter gun.
Now that Thaksin is a convicted criminal on the run, a whole bunch of new legal concerns come into play for the people who want to help him. Essentially aiding a convicted criminal goes against the grain and law just about everywhere. So seeing how Thaksin uses people and then discards them (hence the term dance with the devil), helping Thaksin now may get you thrown in jail.
What was once only a point of debate about helping Thaksin, now becomes a crime. With plenty of anti Thaksin people that have absolutely no problem in filing a criminal complaint about a person or a group helping Thaksin, Thaksin becomes poison to the touch. Now that Thaksin is convicted, any criminal charges filed against people who would help him are very likely to stick in court. The charges can be anything from contempt of court to les majeste, so second and third thoughts about helping Thaksin are now first in mind.
The les majeste law could come into play if someone gave Thaksin access to a live broadcast and Thaksin broke that law in something he said. The person(s) giving Thaksin that access would be accessories to the same crime.
In reality it now becomes the duty of every Thai citizens to help bring Thaksin to justice whether they support him or not. The high court has ruled that Thaksin is guilty and that ruling can not be disputed. Even charges can be brought against the Foreign Minister if he does not assist by revoking Thaksin’s passport and other travel documents. At this point it really is not about choice as the court has ruled. In short the days of asking Thaksin supporters to do the right thing has ended, now they can be made to do the right thing under penalty of law, or at the very least discouraged from doing the wrong thing.
This does bring up the question that truly should be left to the Thai scholars about the actions of the People Power Party (PPP) as a whole. As essentially PPP can easily stand for “Private Political Party”, are they in fact now breaking the law with their very deliberate actions to help Thaksin. Even the rewrite on the Constitution can now be questioned with supporting weight against the rewrite. At this point the game can easily become hardball.
Where this will all go is hard to say. With the level of tension between the pro and anti Thaksin groups, the anti Thaksin group has just been given a new weapon by the court. All it takes now is just one anti Thaksin ‘Dirty Harry’ looking for some pro Thaksin person to make his day.
All I see is plenty of ‘sinful’ Harries (and scholastical hypocrites!) who sold their souls to Satan himself!