Sonthi's amnesty plan gets a roasting

Junta leader Sonthi Boonyaratkalin denied that he initiated the idea of amnesty for politicians found guilty of electoral fraud, but critics of the plan said Sunday has gone too far with his "puzzling" proposal.

Gen Sonthi, chief of the Council for National Security that seized power last September, floated the idea of an amnesty for most of the 111 politicians banned from politics by a tribunal last week.

Even critics of the Constitutional Court's verdict dissolving former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai party were surprised by what Sonthi said was a proposal to promote national reconciliation.

"You can't have your cake and eat it. Are these people guilty or not? If you don't think they are guilty why arrange for the long and costly exercise?" said Suriyasi Katasila, secretary-general of the Campaign for Popular Democracy, a lobby group.

Gen Sonthi said on Sunday that the idea of granting these politicians did not come from his initiative, but from "outsiders" including some members of the National Legislative Assembly (NLA).

Speaking to journalists before a recording of a television programme to be broadcast Monday and Tuesday nights, Gen Sonthi said he had no opinion about the proposal.

Gen Sonthi added that it was natural for some NLA members to be in favour of the idea while many others against it.

After learning of the amnesty proposal, former acting TRT leader Chaturon Chaisang vowed not to accept it, claiming that the TRT executives did nothing wrong.

Commenting on the strong reaction of TRT, Gen Sonthi said the CNS was looking at reconciliation, and that there were several ways in building democracy in the country.

The Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that the leaders of the Thai Rak Thai party, which ruled with heavy majorities in Parliament since 2001, were guilty of paying minor parties to contest seats in an election to fulfil participation requirements. The court also made sweeping criticisms of Thaksin and his colleagues for ruling in what it called a self-serving and undemocratic way.

Several commentators said proposing to waive the court's five-year ban for selected Thai Rak Thai executives strengthened the view of cynics who saw the case as solely designed to politically emasculate the dangerously popular Thaksin. The ousted prime minister, a former police officer who became a billionaire tycoon, founded and funded the party and was its unchallenged leader.

"The whole point of the 19th September coup was to destroy Thai Rak Thai. The junta could not therefore hold an election before it had found someone to prevent the party from taking part in elections. The court has done its job," said a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said over the weekend that the cabinet would consider the merits of an amnesty bill over the next fortnight. Several political experts said last week that the court had blasted a huge hole in the Thai political stage that will be difficult to fill.

Although Thaksin was widely distrusted by the conservative elite and the urban middle class for his authoritarianism and rule-bending to favour his sprawling business empire, his populist policies of development loans and inexpensive healthcare made him popular among many of the rural poor.

The leader of the Democrat Party opposed any amnesty for the politicians sanctioned by the verdict. The country's oldest party - which was absolved by the same court of lesser electoral offences - is now favoured to win the election that the junta has promised to allow by the beginning of next year.

The Bangkok Post speculated on Sunday that General Sonthi's idea of a partial amnesty may be designed to free up certain members of the dissolved Thai Rak Thai party to become the political face of the junta. The Constitutional Court's decisions are final and cannot be appealed, but the ban could be lifted by a cabinet decree, according to legal experts.