Thailand's Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has asked the petitioners to have sympathy for her. - Photo: Reuters
BANGKOK: Thai activist Ruangkrai Leekitwattana spends 10 hours a day in his bedroom writing complaints - mostly about Thailand’s new leader.
The 63-year-old former senator is a serial complainer. Since August, he’s filed at least 20 petitions against Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, for everything from holding shares in a golf course to posing inappropriately in a cabinet photo shoot.
It’s a quirk of the Southeast Asian country, which observers say allows the conservative royalist establishment to wield power over the organs of state, political leaders and parties.
One of the latest examples is a complaint by an activist lawyer alleging Paetongtarn’s father and former premier Thaksin Shinawatra is undermining Thailand’s constitutional monarchy by exerting control over the government.
If accepted by the Constitutional Court this week, it could severely weaken the new leader’s position and lead to her party being disbanded.
In the Thai justice system, these petitions can trigger probes by Election Commission or the anti-graft agency and may turn into high-stakes court cases.
Paetongtarn’s predecessor Srettha Thavisin was ousted in August by a charter court ruling on one such petition alleging an ethics violation, unleashing fresh political turmoil nearly three months after the complaint was filed.
"If you’re my prime minister, I’ll target you right away if you have done something wrong,” Ruangkrai said in an interview at his Bangkok home, where stacks of documents and reference books fill almost every corner.
Ruangkrai is one of about a dozen petitioners who routinely target political leaders and parties.
They’re widely seen as part of the country’s old guard, which is seeking to maintain its influence after last year’s general election ushered in a civilian government following a decade of rule by military-backed administrations.
"In a healthy and functioning democracy, serial petitioners can potentially play a role in holding politicians and governments accountable to the public,” said Napon Jatusripitak, coordinator of the Thailand Studies Programme at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
"But in a climate of judicial overreach, where the legal system is routinely weaponised to preserve the dominance of certain groups and marginalize others, these watchdogs can turn into hired guns.”
In one of the petitions, Ruangkrai has called for the prime minister to be disqualified for being manipulated by Thaksin, which prompted the Election Commission to launch a probe into the matter.
The agency has the power to request the court to remove politicians from office and disband political parties.
Paetongtarn has asked the petitioners to have sympathy for her. She has also said she isn’t worried about the Election Commission’s investigation. Last week, her top aide Prommin Lertsuridej told Bloomberg News the petitions wouldn’t stand up to legal scrutiny and posed no threat to the government’s stability.
Still, analysts say more turmoil is on the cards for Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, which has logged annual growth of below 2% over the past decade due partly to military-royalist interventions in politics.
Thailand’s benchmark stock index is down more than 2% from an Oct. 17 peak on reports of the Election Commission probe.
"The trajectory of these petitions is a watch point,” said Krystal Tan, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.
"A new round of legal cases would threaten to renew political turmoil and present a further setback to investor sentiment and the fragile economy.”
Aside from Srettha’s ouster, the charter court had also ordered the dissolution of Thailand’s largest opposition party, Move Forward, for its election campaign to amend a law that protects the royal family from criticism.
The party won the general election last year but was prevented from forming a government by pro-royalist and military-backed groups that then aligned with former rival Pheu Thai.
Sirikanya Tansakun, deputy leader of the new opposition People’s Party, which replaced Move Forward, said the serial petitioners are waging "lawfare” in Thailand and the current government is now too afraid to push ahead with progressive agendas to avoid potential legal cases.
"The government is playing into their hands, becoming anxious and overcautious,” she said after the ruling Pheu Thai party walked back its election pledge to rewrite the military-backed constitution.
Theerayuth Suwankaesorn, a 50-year-old lawyer who was behind the successful petition against Move Forward, disagrees.
The petitions are a way to bring about political change without resorting to the bloody street protests that have marked recent Thai history, he said.
Such petitions can take months to put together, said Theerayuth, who wheeled in a metal cart stacked with 5,000 pages of documents to the Constitutional Court last month.
His latest submission has called for the court to stop Thaksin’s alleged meddling in the Pheu Thai-run government.
"People try to belittle the petitioners, while forgetting it’s our right as citizens,” Theerayuth said. "If you see violations of the law, this is your constitutional right to pursue.”
Ruangkrai said he has petitioned every Thai leader in the last two decades, regardless of their political ideology.
He filed complaints against Thaksin when he was in power in the 2000s and successfully unseated a prime minister allied with Thaksin.
He joined Pheu Thai after but the relationship soured when the party didn’t appoint him to a parliament committee.
"They switched me out,” Ruangkrai said. "My daughter said these words: they betrayed you. I was furious. I never talked to them again.” - Bloomberg
