New Leaked Video Dishes Yet Another Scandal at Thailand's Constitution Court

Originally published at Siam Voices on November 10, 2010 Another new video has been leaked onto YouTube that further brings Thailand's Constitution Court into disrepute. After the original five videos that allegedly show senior judicial figures meeting with a Democrat MP, the ninth video was now uploaded by the user "ohmygod3009" and this is what can be seen:

The latest clip is titled “Confession of an admission exam cheater” and was posted on Monday by the same source as earlier ones “ohmygod3009”. It is 5.36 minutes long and has captions.

The clip shows a meeting between Pasit Sakdanarong, the now dismissed secretary of the Constitution Court, with two young men. They are named as children of judges who work at the court and alleged to have received help from three judges to pass a test to get work at the court office. (...)

Pasit was recorded as telling the two to admit they cheated in the recruitment exam and they nod their heads. After some talk, one of the two men admits that a court judge brought the exam answers to his home while the other man admits receiving the exam answers at a judge’s office.

"Another court clip posted online", The Nation, November 10, 2010

This video pretty much confirms what Puea Thai Party's spokesman Prompong Nopparit was claiming a few weeks ago:

In his latest barrage, Mr Prompong accused, without naming names, some Constitution Court judges of practising cronyism by appointing their own relatives as their secretaries or advisers on the court's payroll. He cited the particular case of a judge who'd appointed his own son as his secretary. Mr Prompong alleged that the son was kept on the payroll even though he had left the country to further his studies abroad.

To counter the allegation, which has yet to be verified, the Constitution Court judges argued that MPs themselves were not any better because they, too, widely practised cronyism by appointing ill-qualified outsiders, many of them their own relatives, as secretaries, advisers or academics attached to various parliamentary committees. Although it is widely suspected that the Puea Thai spokesman may harbour ulterior motives against the judiciary in general and the Constitution Court in particular, the judges' counter argument against the MPs does no good to the reputation and credibility of the court in the eyes of the public.

"Cronyism in high places", Bangkok Post, October 28, 2010

What is also interesting about this leaked video is the that many Thais were probably not able to initially watch it since Thai authorities have blocked access to it, claiming that it would "break the emergency decree" (which is still active in parts of Thailand including Bangkok). Nevertheless, as with all previous attempts to suppress something online, it proved to be unsuccessful since this clip starts popping up elsewhere.