Updated: Partisan professors

PPT was confused by a statement in The Nation attributed to The Council of University Presidents of Thailand.

The Council’s statement was issued “against the amnesty bill, saying it would set a bad precedent for future rulings on corruption.” The leadership of Thailand’s universities “said this amnesty bill runs against the law and sent a wrong message that corruption is excusable.” Further, these administrators added:

“The amnesty bill … will set a wrong moral standard in Thai society because it will cause a misunderstanding that corruption is not a serious crime and those who commit it will eventually be absolved in an amnesty…”.

We were confused because we would have thought that such a supposedly august body might have considered cold-blooded murder by the state’s officials as being worthy of a mention in their statement. We wondered why the state’s impunity would not be cause for concern? Surely murder by the state says something about moral standards? Omitting it says quite a lot about the moral standards of the partisan professor-administrators.

[Of course, it could be just pathetic reporting by the newspaper that caused this tragic omission. If this is the case, then we’d gladly change this post to be one of criticism of a partisan press.]

So we decided to do a little more research on the Council. Our own pages mentioned an earlier statement by the Council that was decidedly yellow.

If one goes to the Council’s website, it is found that the listed president of the organization lists 27 members, while the report notes that the partisan statement is made in the name just 18 of the member universities.

We also looked at the listed office bearers, and there is just the president listed. It is Somkit Lertpaithoon, who has been anti-Thaksin Shinawatra in his political statements for several years. He seems quite proud of his service to the military junta and the junta’s governments following the 2006 coup, listing the following:

• Member of the Constitution Drafting Assembly (2007)
• Secretary of the Constitution Drafting Assembly (2007)
• Member of Committee on Law Revision for The Royal Institute (2008)
• Member of Political Development Council (2008)
• Member of Sub- Committee in Public Sector Development Commission (2008)
• Member of The Council of State (2009)
• Vice President on Legal Advisers’ Committee to PM Abhisit Vejjajiva (2009)

The website may be out of date, but the point we are making is that if professor-adminstrators are to be taken seriously, then they need to be far less partisan than this statement suggests.

Update: Somkit seems to have taken one point on board: apparently he is now saying that the “the bill should benefit only people who gathered in the political rallies in 2010, and should not cover other unrelated acts such as rallies against corruption cases.” But his partisanship is still on display. After all, this is a member of the junta’s Constitutional Drafting Committee that approved and legalized an amnesty for the military brass that trashed the 1997 constitution, the nation’s basic law. Hence, his plan to use the statue of Pridi Phanomyong for his protests is a travesty: Pridi’s government was ditched by a coup and Pridi was sent into lifelong exile, accused of being anti-monarchist. Somkit’s use of his position is thus partisan and reprehensible.