The latest attempt to remove Acting Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra over the transfer of former, and now re-instated, National Security Council Secretary-General Thawil Pliensri has run into some legal wrangling.  

The Supreme Administrative Court found that the transfer of Sec-Gen Thawil, shortly after the Yingluck administration took power, was illegal.  Thawil argued that it was motivated by the patron-client system and “if the patronage system stays strong, how can civil officials be counted on to do their jobs correctly?” he argued.

Which is all a bit rich, since his installation by the Abhisit government formed one part of an academic study on high-level bureaucratic appointments by Khon Kaen University which concluded that these are motivated by, er, the patron-client system.

It is normal for a new administration to select as head of the NSC someone who they can expect to do their bidding.  And so Thawil proved, serving as Secretary to the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation during the crackdown against the red shirts, making unproven claims that red shirts had received military training in Cambodia, and threatening to close the Burmese refugee camps and send them all home or to third countries (they’re still there).

Even after losing his job, Thawil continued to serve his masters.  His testimony at the still ongoing trial of 14 UDD leaders was a masterpiece of courtroom tactics.  First of all he came over all Ronald Reagan and claimed he couldn’t remember anything.  Then, when prompted by his own witness statement, he suddenly did remember.  A doctor’s appointment, if it please the court, sorry, can’t stay.  The court had to halt proceedings for the day.  He didn’t appear ill in any life-threatening sort of way, but hey, if he was being treated for amnesia, maybe it was the right call.

And, despite drawing a salary as a government official, he has over the past months taken to moonlighting on the PDRC stage.

It really was no surprise that the Yingluck government should find his presence at the NSC less than helpful and seek the first opportunity to shunt him off into some siding where he could do them no harm.  In some countries, like the US, such a change of personnel is de rigueur.  In Thailand, it has been done again and again.

But this time Thawil took the PM to court (since she had to sign off on his transfer) and surprise, surprise, the Supreme Administrative Court found against her.  Not that she doesn’t have the authority, but that she used this authority for the Wrong Reasons.  Penalty – re-instatement, which has been done. 

Now the Constitutional Court gets involved and decides that this ‘illegal’ transfer was done ‘for personal benefits or for the benefits of others or of a political party’ and thus a violation of Section 266 of the Constitution.  As a result, Section 182 comes into play and Yingluck loses her position as PM.

Except that since the dissolution of the House for elections that may come sometime this side of Christmas, Yingluck has not been PM but caretaker PM and another section of the constitution seems to say that she has to stay put until a new government is formed after the election.

Anti-government forces have therefore prepared a new strategy to overthrow the current government without actually staging a military coup.  And without an election, of course, which they seem bound to lose. 

The latest accusation against the Prime Minister concerns the Government Lottery Office and allegations concerning similarities between winning lottery ticket numbers and the numbers on the licence plates of vehicles owned by or associated with the Prime Minister.

These allegations have been rife since she first took office in 2011.  Gamblers then noted that the reg on a police car in her motorcade had the same numbers as that fortnight’s lottery winner.  (This is the extremely widespread illegal lottery, you should realise, based on the last 3 digits of the winning number of the official national lottery.  The government once tried to stop this diversion of funds by co-opting this system, but the courts decided that the government was being corrupt.  Well, it was a Thaksin government.)

Such ‘coincidences’ have continued with a new spate surfacing last month.  Those losing on the lottery are crying foul.  Someone dunnit, but who?

Now the powers that want to be got nowhere looking at the lottery draw.  This has been the subject of scandals down the years and now has a seemingly cast-iron method to prevent any rigging.  Layers of methods, in fact.

So attention turned to the claims that Yingluck was somehow orchestrating this for her own benefit.  This is just the kind of sneaky corrupt shenanigans that gets the Constitutional Court wetting itself.

A spokesperson from the Court says that they will find against Yingluck under Section 266 (1) for interfering in the duties of the Government Lottery Office for her own as yet to be determined benefit and then sack her under Section 182 (9) that authorizes the dismissal of caretaker Prime Ministers.

Constitutional scholars expressed great surprise at this statement.  They noted that (a) nobody has referred this case the Constitutional Court; (b) the statement seems to say that a verdict has been decided before the case is heard; and (c) there is no subsection (9) in Section 182.

The spokesperson brushed these concerns aside.  First, the Court was accepting any and every petition that threatened the government so taking on a case on its own volition was merely a way of increasing the court’s efficiency, as was a pre-determined verdict.

As for the non-existent subsection, he noted that some members of the Constitutional Court had been involved in drafting this constitution and if they now discovered that they had forgotten something, it was only natural for them to put things right and thereby save the nation.

About author:  Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).