Depending on which message of gloom you read, the country is moving off the map, at a dangerous crossroads, down a cul-de-sac and into a quagmire.  All at the same time. 

But have no fear, Senate Speaker Surachai Liangboonlertchai has found an escape route.

And before we go any further, in the interests of demonstrating how much Thailand conforms to ‘a democratic form of government with His Majesty the King as Head of State’, let me point out that this is Surachai the unelected Senator, Surachai the elected (by his semi-unelected peers) (but not officially appointed) Speaker, and Surachai the member of the ‘Group of 40’ anti-government senators one of whose leading lights decided to say on TV ‘I hate elections’ (ooh what a giveaway). 

But hey, when you’re in a quagmire at a crossroads down a cul-de-sac off the map, you don’t question whose arm is pulling you out.

So how does not-all-that-democratic Senate Speaker Surachai propose to extract the nation from its difficulties? 

By ignoring the law.

In a meeting with university rectors, Senate Speaker Surachai reportedly said “Legal experts should not try to use the laws to reject solutions offered by any side.”  If this happens, he went on to say, “it will turn laws into shackles for this country”.

Now what can he mean by this?

Does he mean ignoring the laws about Prime Ministerial dereliction of duty in failing to prevent corruption in a government project where as far as I know no corruption has yet been proven in a court of law?  I don’t think so. 

Does he mean ignoring the laws that say that a Prime Minister has the authority to transfer a high-ranking government official but not if it is an immoral action that means moving someone hand-picked by the outgoing opposition who shared responsibility for shooting down your supporters and replacing him by someone qualified for the job who asked to be moved and who was himself replaced by someone also ostensibly qualified for that job but who happens to be the brother of the former wife of the brother of the Prime Minister?  Surely not, even when an official of the Court that decides this case stoutly defends his right to do virtually the same thing.

Does he mean ignoring the laws that say that amending the constitution to create an all-elected senate (such as exist in many democracies and once did here) is in fact not only unconstitutional but even constitutes an attempt to overthrow the democratic form of government with His Majesty the King as Head of State and must be punished by removal from office and loss of political rights for five years?  No, no, they’re going to need that one.

Or does he mean the laws that say an election must be held on the same day in every ward of every constituency across the country and if any gang of anti-democratic thugs manage to prevent this in just one polling booth, then the whole exercise is invalid and a waste of money (which you can always bill the Prime Minister for anyway)?  Certainly not, they’ll need that law up their sleeves every time it looks like the electorate is going to choose the wrong government.

So what exactly are these laws that could turn into ‘shackles’?

Well I’m betting he’s looking at that picayune regulation about the Prime Minister having to be an elected Member of Parliament.  By rights this ridiculous and unnecessary obstacle to good governance ought to be buried in some subsection of a subsection of the rules of parliamentary procedure where it could be safely ignored. 

But for some obscure reason it has been elevated to a section of the constitution.  So some obstructive, nit-picking, petty-minded souls, including the recalcitrant ‘legal experts’ that Senator Surachai refers to (and anyone else who can be bothered to read the constitution) like to point out that since we don’t have any elected MPs as of the house dissolution last December, a new PM can’t be appointed until there is an election.  So, er, let’s have an election.

For heaven’s sake, we’ve had unelected PMs before (just like we’ve had totally elected Senates, but we now know that’s unconstitutional).  Dammit, we’ve even at one time had laws that allowed serving government officials to become PM (even if the only government officials who seemed eager to avail themselves of this opportunity wore green uniforms).

This issue is only one that citizens died for in 1992.  It’s not that big a deal.  Come on, bend the rules a bit.  We’re stuck in a quagmire, remember.

And while we’re at it, there’s another rule we could perhaps quietly forget.  It has been pointed out that while the constitution requires the monarch to be Buddhist, nowhere does it say the monarch must be Thai.  So why should the Prime Minister have to be Thai?  Open the job up to free international competition.

HG for PM.  Got quite a nice ring to it, no?

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).