Deconstructing Sopon Ongkara: Final Solution to the Thaksin Question

Sidelines: Govt must hit Thaksin where it hurts most

Sopon Ongkara

The Nation

The government and agencies pushing for the passage of the new constitution are becoming concerned that Thaksin and his huge war chest abroad may able to persuade a large number of people to reject the charter on the grounds that it is the product of a military dictatorship.

Sopon’s logic: The government is worried that the Thaksin and his money will convince Thais, notably the poor masses that Sopon has contempt for, that the new constitution is a product of a military dictatorship. Note to Sopon: The constitution is a product of a military dictatorship, and Thaksin’s money has nothing to do with that fact.

Some academics and university lecturers, Western-trained and obsessed with the idea that democracy must come from elections only, are against the new charter.

Sopon, for some bizarre reason, thinks he knows more about democracy than “Western-trained” academics and university lecturers. And this from a man who openly endorses military coups! Further, I will examine Sopon’s democratic logic further down the column, because the last thing on Sopon’s mind is democracy, the rule of law and constitutionalism. No, Sopon only cares about his personal vendetta against Thaksin and nothing else.

They seem not to consider what they would do if Thaksin were still around with his unassailable power base and money from government coffers and questionable sources.

Sopon has no shame. He deals with hypotheticals as if they were the truth. Is Sopon a fortune teller? How could he know the future of the country if there wasn’t a coup? It really is frustrating how a “journalist” gets away with this kind of bullshit.

Let's deal with the problems at hand and explore how we should deal with Thaksin to prevent his attempts to derail the new charter and cause other political troubles.

The Nation has not published one investigative report proving that Thaksin is behind the “vote no” campaign. If Sopon knows something we don’t know, then why doesn’t The Nation report it?

No doubt Thaksin is more than angry after the freezing of more than Bt65 billion of his assets. That's just peanuts, as we know that he has at least Bt200 billion stashed abroad in various places, such as in savings accounts and investments in funds and securities through nominees here and abroad.

Again, Sopon fabricates facts about Thaksin’s wealth instead of telling the truth. He writes that Thaksin has 200 billion baht stashed away. First, how does Sopon know this, and if he knows it is a fact, then why hasn’t The Nation done an expose on Thaksin’s wealth? It has only had seven years to do it. Second, 200 billion is almost 7 billion dollars, which would make Thaksin one of the richest men in the world. But, of course, Sopon just pulls these figures right out of his ass without one shred of evidence.

One way to cause him sleepless nights would be to bring the battle to his place of refuge, England, rather than letting him go on about the lack of democracy and military dictatorship here. There are tough laws in England dealing with political crooks who use their dirty money to live luxurious lives amidst the poverty and hardships of their fellow countrymen.

Sopon’s final solution to the Thaksin question is to dump Thailand’s problems onto the British, and let them endlessly deal with the Thaksin drama, as if they cared. Sopon is so delusional about the real world that he has no clue about how the court system works in the West. Sopon really believes that the British should just take the junta’s( and The Nation’s) word that Thaksin is a crook. Only an idiot like Sopon( and the rest of the idiots at The Nation) would seriously think that a western government would prosecute a democratically elected leader ousted in an illegal coup without any evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. What kind of lunacy is this?

Moreover, if The Nation is so worried about the “Thaksin Question”, then why doesn’t The Nation hand over all the facts that it is has been sitting on (supposedly out of fear of repercussions for telling the truth) for the last 12 years of Thaksin’s political career and let the British press have a go at Thaksin, if he really is the heinous criminal that Sopon says that he is. If The Nation is so worried about Thaksin’s crimes, why doesn’t it hand over all the evidence it has to the British government and to the English football authorities? Why does The Nation wait for the junta installed commissions to tell it what to report? In any other country, the media would question the findings of a government commission and question them to see if they pan out with its own independent investigations. But The Nation just reports what the military tells it to report.

I would wager a lot of money that The Nation doesn’t have anything. It doesn’t have a “smoking gun,” because The Nation is an incompetently run news organization led by sanctimonious morons who have no clue about doing really journalism. These so-called journalists at The Nation actually believe that their opinions are the same things as facts that could be used to prosecute Thaksin in a western court of law, which actually has criminal rules of procedure that have stood the test of time for hundreds of years.

Thaksin has been boasting about his purchase of Manchester City, but until money has been paid and shares have changed hands, many will remain sceptical that such a deal will materialise. It could be another political gimmick or a public-relations stunt on Thaksin's part. Now he is making the most out of it.

Real journalists deal with facts and not hypotheticals.

The government can cause him more trouble by hiring a high-profile law firm to sue him in England, calling for the Manchester City deal to be stalled or the shares to be frozen on the grounds that the money to be spent on the shares left the country without the due permission of the Bank of Thailand.

Sue him for what exactly? Who would be the plaintiff and the defendant? The Kingdom of Thailand versus Thaksin Shinawatra? And this whole scenario would be fought out in a British court? WTF does Britain have to do with Thai politics? No Thai with a bit of shame would want his country's political problems hashed out in a foreign country in a foreign court system that has absolutely nothing to do with the problems at hand.

Who here would have the guts and nerve to go after Thaksin's hot money with government agencies still engaged in managerial buck-passing in order to avoid getting involved in a highly complex issue?

I really love the The Nation’s hypocrisy. The Nation never ceases to bang the drums of Bang Rajan when it comes to defending the sanctity and integrity of glorious Thai government institutions. But, in this particular case, The Nation wants to fob the Thaksin problem onto the British.

This problem would be solved if they let English lawyers handle the task.

How exactly would English lawyers handle the “Thaksin question”? I wonder how many English lawyers Sopon contacted and asked for their professional legal opinion. I reckon the answer is none.

We have the money to pay, of course, especially if we can recover a big chunk of Thaksin's assets hidden abroad.

How would a British court recover Thaksin’s assets stashed in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands? Which British laws did Thaksin break? Did he steal or embezzle money from the British people? WTF is Sopon getting the British mixed up in Thai affairs. Also, Thaksin has never been accused of stealing from the country, so why would his assets need to be recovered?

It will be a win-win situation for the law firm and the government, not to mention for taxpayers whose money Thaksin and his cronies took away.

The only win-win situation is the one that exists in Sopon’s delusional mind.

Submitting an emergency request to the English high court would take just a few days. We can also inform the British Embassy here of our intentions and let the British people know that they should not consort with suspected notorious criminals, who might buy a fairly well known football club with dirty money.

Seriously, read this truly f###ed up paragraph. Submit an emergency request concerning what exactly? Inform the British Embassy about what exactly? Let the British people know that Thaksin is a suspected criminal? Notice that facts are missing from all of this bullshit that Sopon is spouting. He really believes that The Nation and the military junta can just say whatever they want about Thaksin and seriously expect people to believe them. Where are the facts, and why haven't they been published in Thailand or given to British to publish in their newspapers? Sopon thinks he can call his political enemies criminals without a shred of proof and expect foreigners to believe him without any substantiation.

Sopon’s mentality is not only sick, but also dangerous, because he believes in launching propaganda campaigns against Thai politicians ousted in illegal coups in foreign countries. And Sopon will get away with this bullshit. His editors could care less about his lack of ethics and professionalism, and the foreign press in Bangkok will continue to allow him to spout this nonsense week after week without any kind of response.

Seeking litigation in England does not mean that our courts or judicial system would lose sovereignty.

No, it means involving the British in a problem that really is none of their business. If anything, the British government should be scolding the military junta for overthrowing Thaksin and request his restoration.

Sopon’s notion is so ridiculous, so unprecedented in modern world politics that he should be ridiculed for this column for the rest of his life. Seriously, it would be a first for a military junta to sue a former Thai prime minister in a court for corruption in a third party country without any evidence at all.

If Aung San Suu Kyi was still in Britain and the Burmese junta tried to sue Aung for corruption and recovery of assets in a British court, the junta would become the laughingstock of the world. This just goes to show that even the Burmese junta isn't as stupid as Sopon Ongkara.

Such a move would be an extension of our efforts to get Thaksin through legal means to ensure that criminal proceedings in Thailand and in England complement one another, and to let the world know that this man who brags about his good deeds is not who they perceive him to be.

How can anybody take such foolish notions seriously? Why does Sopon have a job where the firing of brain cells is involved?

There is also a suggestion that Thaksin and his lawyers here have insisted that they would not want to defend themselves in Thailand because they fear that the courts would be under the influence of the Council for National Security and the government.

It is a legitimate concern. The judges were all hand-picked by the junta and the prosecutors and investigators are Thaksin’s sworn political enemies.

That's hogwash, as we all know. Thaksin and his family do not want "justice" in court. What they actually want is to get off the hook. If full justice is served, it is highly possible, if not certain, that they will all serve time for a series of high crimes, all reflecting a betrayal of the public trust.

What high crimes? Tax avoidance and buying property on Ratchadapisek?

Refusing not to appear in court or accept the trial system here on whatever grounds could be easily interpreted as contempt of court, and the court could hand down a punishment to Thaksin and his lawyers without a trial if it so desired.

This could be a possibility.

Destruction of his credibility abroad, which might not be much now, is an effective means to prevent his self-proclaimed supremacy and hollow self-righteousness from fooling some people who still want his money.

Here we are again with Sopon self-admittedly arguing for a propaganda campaign against Thaksin in a foreign court system. Will it be effective? Well, I don’t think the British are idiots, so I seriously doubt they will sustain the criminalization Thai politics in their court system. The British legal system has a lot of integrity. I doubt it wants to be tainted with the military junta’s witch hunt and The Nation’s vendetta against Thaksin.

Loose lips serve as their own trap. Thaksin and his lawyers are using their mouths to open the jail doors for themselves. Their mouths are the most fearsome weapons they face. If they had shut up, things would have quieted down.

What does this paragraph have to do with the rest of the column?

Now we know how to deal with Thaksin by engaging him in more criminal and civil cases abroad. The question is who is going to get it done, because Thaksin still has cronies in high public office here, and some of our guys want to bleed him dry before dealing with him conclusively.

If the British court system really processes and allies itself with a military junta’s campaign of political destruction against Thaksin, it will compromise its integrity. A British court should never recognize the legitimacy of a military junta as a plaintiff against a prime minister that it ousted illegally and without just cause. Let us hope the British are smart enough not to drink from the junta's and The Nation's Kool-Aid.