Democracy has traditionally been located in the various Thai constitutions, but observers noted recently that the new constitution seems to have no democracy in it. It has been replaced by long-winded ambiguous ramblings that seem to support a far more autocratic form of government.
This has provoked outrage among pro-democracy groups who are demanding the reinstatement of democracy. Many also want to know who removed democracy from the constitution and to have them charged with theft of a national asset.
Initial attempts by pro-democracy activists to register the disappearance with the police were not successful. A deputy chief of police said that if anyone wanted to report the theft of democracy, they would first have to provide documents proving that they were the owner and therefore the injured party. None of the would-be complainants had been able to do that.
When it was put to the high-ranking police officer that democracy belonged to the entire nation and therefore any citizen had the right to file a complaint, he merely said that the police had a duty to uphold the law, whether that meant rejecting their complaints, arresting democracy demonstrators or detaining those who thought they had a democratic right to share things on the internet.
Other outraged democracy supporters went to the Constitutional Court to request them to look into the disappearance of democracy. The Court, however, summarily dismissed the request saying that they had never been given responsibility for safeguarding democracy in the first place.
Their duty was simply to adjudicate whichever cases took their fancy according to the constitution in force at the time, such as by declaring elections illegal, prosecuting undemocratic actions like voting for an elected senate, and generally hounding the living bejesus out of elected politicians, who, the spokesperson added as an aside, were the real enemies of so-called democracy.
Some members of the media and the public approached the Parliament Secretariat on the suspicion that democracy had been stolen at some point during the constitutional drafting process. They asked to see the minutes of the meetings of the Constitutional Drafting Committee for the relevant period.
An official from Secretariat was pushed out to explain to the media that it just so happened that the pencils of the Committee’s secretaries had been taken away for sharpening at exactly the time that democracy was deleted and so no record existed of who was responsible. The remarkable coincidence was greeted with disbelief in many quarters.
Reports then started to emerge that emergency meetings of the Constitutional Drafting Committee had been held in the early hours of the morning behind locked doors. The press published various pictures of a locked door, seemingly taken from mobile phones, as proof of something or other
Some claimed that a troupe of special dancers had been hired for a ritual dance at one of these middle-of-the-night meetings, with rumours saying that the dancers were predominantly young females wearing the traditional Thai costumes that can be seen in establishments along Ratchadaphisek Road. The sound of boisterous revelry had allegedly been heard from outside the meeting room during their performance.
With various avenues of inquiry getting absolutely nowhere, the government initiated what seemed to be a crackdown. First the Prime Minister said he would order an inquiry into where democracy had got to, which most observers saw as a sign that no further action would be taken.
The deputy chief of police then warned that anyone who filed a claim to recover democracy but who failed to prove that they had ever owned democracy in the first place would be prosecuted for filing false charges.
A well-known political scapegoat was then charged under the Computer Crime Act for a Facebook post in which he claimed that according to the preamble of the constitution itself, there was supposed to be democracy in there somewhere and that its absence was therefore a national loss. The Technology Crime Suppression Division claimed that this opinion was false and so posting it on the internet was an offence. Bedsides, people might be led to think differently from the government, which would prevent national harmony.
Another well-known campaigner from the Association for the Protection of the Constitution was intercepted by soldiers at the at the Government House public service centre as he was about to submit a petition the Prime Minister to, er, protect the constitution. He was democratically detained without charge for 10 hours. On his release he was told that numerous invisible hands were involved in the case of the invisible democracy and that he should therefore make his campaign invisible.
The authorities then tried to put a fence around the constitution, banning publication of print copies and blocking their own website that contained the text. Since countless copies were already in circulation and anyone who can’t get round the blocking of internet pages is too stupid to deserve a computer, it was not clear what this was intended to achieve.
The junta government eventually issued a call for calm, asking all parties to abandon their protests and forget the issue. Instead they should look forward to the time when, one day in the somewhat distant future, the nation will have happiness and prosperity and, oh alright, democracy. Sort of.
Harrison George