So we have pictures and videos, that may or may not be legit, purporting to show:

(a) interference in the workings of the judiciary by the Privy Council;

(b) highly questionable discussions between a Constitutional Court official and an MP on the legal team of the ruling Democrat Party on a pending case that could lead to the dissolution of the party and banning from politics of, among others, the Prime Minister;

(c) discussions among judges about how to avoid giving a verdict against the government and how to avoid criticisms of double standards if they do;

(d) more discussions among judges about how to spin a scandal of exam-cheating and nepotism in the Constitutional Court, including the idea of shifting the blame onto a former colleague now serving as a National Human Rights Commissioner.

In the aftermath, the court official involved does a runner, gets fired, and then is found to have qualifications that bear no relation to his job and which may have been faked anyway.

All this adds up to allegations (which I stress have still to be verified) of some pretty serious hanky-panky in the upper reaches of the judiciary and which could (again, if and only if proved true) implicate the Privy Council, the government, the National Election Commission and the National Human Rights Commission.

Now we are all prepared to live with the odd bent copper or lunatic ministerial decision. But these (as yet unproven) allegations involve important institutions of state that we would like to be able to trust. Failing that, we might as well give up, go home, and leave them to play out their corrupt, self-serving farce.

So what do we need do to restore some faith and sanity into the system?

Well those most at risk of exposure seem to have decided that the best way is to ban people from looking at the (alleged) evidence, search for a scapegoat responsible for disseminating this (alleged) evidence, hold their own inquiry into their own behaviour (which finds, surprise, surprise, that they are not guilty) and threaten all comers with contempt of court.

Isn’t that sort of missing the main point?

A well-practised quirk in this society. My first encounter was well away from the corridors of power.

The wait for the green light for a right turn had been long and the when it came, the traffic was moving too slowly for someone way back in the queue. He saw every Bangkok driver’s dream – empty road space – and decided to use it, even though it was on the wrong side of the road. Before he could get to the turn, the lights changed and he was faced with a hundred or so motorcyclists practising their Grand Prix starts and 4 lanes of frustrated motorists coming straight at him.

He could not barge his way back into the queue because by now he was on the wrong side of a central divider. The motorbikes swerved past him but the leading car coming at him in his lane had no such option. They both did eventually slow down and stop, but only after they had tinkled each other’s headlights.

The policeman was quickly on the scene. He wanted to know why the first driver was on the wrong side of the road. Driver 1 riposted that he had sounded his horn, so the accident was the other driver’s fault for not stopping. Driver 2 countered that he had heard no horn, but had sounded his own.

The debate had been effortlessly diverted away from ‘WTF were you doing on the wrong side of the road?’ to ‘Who horned who?’ I was on a bus overlooking the accident and the policeman eventually turned the passengers into an impromptu jury on the question. Our selective hearing decided the first driver was guilty.

For not sounding his horn, of course, not for driving on the wrong side of the road, an issue that had long been forgotten.

78 Muslim men in the Tak Bai incident in 2004 died as a result of being piled on top of each other, 6 or 7 deep, in army trucks. The only people charged were the survivors and according to then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the responsibility for the deaths lay with the victims for starving themselves during Ramadan. Who did it? No answer.

When an inquest determined that Imam Yapa Kaseng had been tortured to death in March 2008 inside an army base in Narathiwat, the debate turned on to the shoddy record-keeping by the military which meant that no one knew who was on duty that night. Who did it? No answer.

When 2 electricity workers were hanged by police in Nakhon Pathom for pasting anti-dictatorship posters, the re-enactment at Thammasat University on 4 October 1976 triggered a storm of protest (and a massacre and a coup) about whether one of the actors looked like a member of the Royal Family and whether press photographs of the incidents were doctored. Who hanged the workers? No answer.

So does the Constitutional Court pre-judge cases in response to improper outside pressure and practice corruption in its internal affairs? I don’t think we’ll ever get an answer to that question.

Because it will never be asked.