Thailand’s Court Removes PM Srettha Thavisin. Can India’s Judiciary Tackle the Criminal Nexus in Politics? Will India’s Criminal Politicians Ever Face the Same Judgement?

The expulsion of PM Srettha reignites the controversy over ethical governance in Thailand, particularly over appointing officials with questionable backgrounds.

Judgement of the Court

The result of the case, in which the Constitutional Court narrowly voted 5-4, ruled that Srettha should vacate his post for his breach of conduct. He had appointed the disgraced lawyer Pichit Chuenban, who had just been released after spending a month in prison following a six-month sentence for contempt in attempting to bribe a court official.

It is underlying ethical conduct in governance in that Srettha’s actions were devoid of integrity by a prime minister. Remarkably, Srettha’s tenure was the shortest, less than a year in office, and he became the fourth Prime Minister to be brought down by the Constitutional Court in 16 years.

This indicates a pattern and raises questions about the stability of the political system in Thailand, characterized by judicial interventions reflecting, most times, the influence of the military and royalist factions.

The removal of Srettha is a part of the bigger story of Thai politics, in which the military and conservative elites have traditionally used judicial power against political opponents. This can be gleaned from the recent dissolution of the Move Forward Party, which came to amend laws related to royal defamation, and from a longer trajectory of this power struggle in the Thai political environment.

Many were quick to label this move by the court as politically motivated, set to save a burdensome status quo that, at times, has had no compromise in silencing reformist movements. However, the appointment of Srettha as Prime Minister was already political and compromised: a leader of the coalition government that combined parties related to the military.

His rise to power was through a convoluted electoral process that sidelined the more progressive Move Forward Party, which had a lot of public support. This political negotiation underlines Thailand’s complex and challenging governance; electoral victories don’t seem to translate into political power.

Comparison with the Political environment in India. The scenario in Thailand can be related to the political scenario in India, especially with different governments under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The rule of the BJP has been pointed to have liaisons with many criminals and cases of the absence of ethical governance and accountability.

Recently, there have been charges against the BJP, claiming that it has been chalking out tickets to those with criminal records, provoking an uproar among large public sections. In the 2019 Parliamentary Elections, 43% of criminals raked up towards the BJP and its ranks, according to an ADR report.

This reflects a disturbing normalization of criminality in Indian politics or an electoralism that subordinates ethical imperatives. The BJP’s governance style has been centralised in a vital element of power through all possible means, often disadvantageous to democratic norms. 

Many conscientious observers feel that the kind of nationalism and majoritarian politics it practises have resultantly displaced ethical governance in the same fashion as executive manipulation in Thailand. The leadership of theBJP has time and time again been accused of misusing the state institutions and targeting its political opponents, quite like the judicial actions against the parties of Move Forward in Thailand.

It is seen that the levels of morality and ethical conduct of the Thai Constitutional Court contrast sharply with those of the Indian political environment. Though the court of Thailand has passed strict judgments against defaulting leaders regarding their deviant actions, the Indian political system favours candidates of more criminal backgrounds. Hence, the results differ, which lowers morale and questions the very integrity of the political institutions of the respective nations.

Implications for Governance

The removal of Srettha Thavisin has had a more significant impact on the political future of Thailand because it destabilised the current coalition government and has raised other issues. For instance, foreign investors were left to worry about the country’s political risk. Political unrest has already caused a withdrawal of more than $3 billion from Thai stocks, which shows a vote of no confidence regarding this government’s capacity to stabilise the economy.

The BJP’s sustained partnership with criminal elements in India raises other dilemmas. Though the party has not suffered a drastic decline in electoral strength, the moral cost of its choice of candidates might have long-term effects on democratic politics. The performance of the parties fuels criminalization in politics. It might alienate considerable sections of voters who prefer an honest and clean brand of politics, thereby reconstituting the electoral environment in forthcoming elections.

The BJP’s Washing Machine

An Indian Youtuber Mohak Mangal has called this act of BJP as Its Washing machine. Indian Polity remains corrupt with corruption charges and other ethical aberrations as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has announced the launch of its latest innovation, the symbolic “BJP Washing Machine.” But this is no ordinary washing machine. It can scrub even the most polluted reputations clean again, sparkling and ready for a new life within the ruling party’s roost. 

Here’s the machine’s effectiveness: leaders who were involved in scandals and could not be seen in public, let alone spoken for, turn into models of morality, prepared to vigorously put forth their defence of the very party at whose sins they had previously feigned horror.

Take the recent example of former Olympic boxer Vijender Singh, who, several days ago, defected from the Congress to the BJP. Only days before his defection, Singh was quite visible on social media, making fun of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

But, hours after joining the BJP, he claimed he had napped. A sudden epiphany occurred during the nap, and he realised he was on the “wrong platform.” Such uncanny flip-flops, where yesterday’s fire-spewing critic becomes a vociferous champion today, are not an anomaly.

Such Modi critics include independent thinker Gaurav Vallabh and industrialist Gautam Adani, who questioned their shares of a love-hate relationship that continued to play in the background. He, too, has joined the BJP. 

A few months back, he had told the media, with what seemed an unassailable sense of certainty, that he would “never” join the BJP. His assertion, “Absolutely. 100%,” came with a level of certainty that has since been washed out, courtesy of the transformative machine that the BJP has become. Ethics today are up for sale to the highest bidder in Indian politics.

While defections happen in every party, no one ‘cleanses’ defectors quite like the BJP. They are so effective that it has turned scandals such as the Adarsh Housing Society scam from being a significant blot on the careers of leaders like Ashok Chavan into historical footnotes.

In this regard, proper laundering occurred for former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan. January 2024, he left the Congress to join the BJP, a particularly convenient move, given that in February of the same year, an investigation by CBI and ED laid bare his involvement in the Adarsh scam-a scandal of irregular allocation of apartments meant for Kargil War heroes and their families to his relatives and other high profile occupiers. 

Despite the BJP having objected to Chavan’s past deeds, the party accepted him as if to wash off all the corruption and shame on his name. This is not the only one. Statistics reveal something disconcerting: since 2014, 25 opposition leaders accused of corruption cases have joined the BJP. 

Of them, 23 probes have been stopped or quietly dumped. Suvendu Adhikari, former TMC heavyweight and alleged to be the mastermind of the Narada Sting Operation, is yet another lucky entrant who has managed to pass through the ethical cleansing of the BJP. The Supreme Court had clear evidence of his involvement in bribery, but Adhikari, after joining the BJP in 2020, seems to have been shielded from the courts.

When asked about leaders accused of corruption lining up to join the BJP, Sitharaman answered nothing. The BJP is actively expanding its ranks with such leaders from other parties, most bringing the baggage of corruption allegations behind them.

Out of the 417 candidates announced by the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a staggering 116 are defectors from other parties with 37 coming from Congress alone.

The hypocrisy is simply appalling. Prime Minister Modi’s slogan of a “Congress-mukt Bharat” seems so fake when he is inducting, by the dozen, from the Congress, some of whose leaders are still to answer charges for their past misdemeanors. The BJP cleans and washes the past itself, obliterating inconvenient truths and rewriting history according to its whims and fancies.

One of the most striking instances of this was in the case of Suvendu Adhikari. In 2016, the CBI filed an FIR against Adhikari and other Trinamool Party leaders involved in the Narda scam. After he defects to the BJP, the investigation seems to have been put on the back burner. 

Pressure and evidence kept mounting against Adhikari, but the CBI has not made any concrete moves. Upon being pressed for the cause, the CBI claimed a “lack of permission” from the Lok Sabha Speaker an excuse so manifestly flimsy that really what it does is underline the politicisation of the agency itself.

This selective application of justice is symbolic of the broader malaise that affects investigative agencies in India. Since Narendra Modi took over India’s highest office in 2014, questions have been raised about the action initiated by the Enforcement Directorate against 121 of India’s prominent politicians. 

The irony is that 95% of these belong to an opposition party. However, for those who make a convenient defection and jump ship to the BJP, most of these inquiries quickly vanish—fueling suspicions that the quest for justice stands replaced by a pursuit of power.

The washing machine of the BJP does not cleanse the reputations of individuals; it cleanses the whole party of its putrid ethical standards. Figures like Ashok Chavan, who some years ago were raked over the coals by none less than the BJP itself, were now hailed by the likes of Devendra Fadnavis as “great leaders.” 

The change is of such total quality that the past descriptions of condemnation are not forgotten to such an extent that they are reversed so that the BJP now stands as the champion for those it once condemned.

This manipulation of ethics does not remain mere individual cases. The institutions meant to uphold justice, the CBI, the ED, and even the judiciary, have been compromised; political interference has eroded their independence. The CBI is now more of a loyal entity, which readily follows the government’s orders without question, as opposed to the “caged parrot” it was dubbed once by the Supreme Court.

The strategy of the BJP concerning the investigative agencies is clear: to weaponize them in going after its political opponents while providing safe havens for those willing to switch sides. This is a form of undermining the rule of law. Endgame democracy has no relevance to it.

Consider the case of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

In 2007, the CBI had instituted a case of disproportionate assets against Yadav and his family, and mysteriously enough, it got dropped, like so many other cases, after he cast a crucial vote in favor of the UPA government in a no-confidence motion.

There are no coincidences in this connection, but rather, it is an amalgamation of how political alliances can be bought and sold with justice as the currency.

Such trading-off patterns have become embedded in the core, and they now mark the very fiber of the BJP’s approach to governance. The level of the party’s ethics correlates with an equal determination to stay in power at all costs. Co-opting opposition leaders or dealing ruthlessly with dissident voices reveals a chilling willingness to abandon principle or political gain.

BJP technique: it does not give an idea of a mop with which to do the cleanse on the dirty politicians really; instead, it bears symptoms of the moral degradation that defines today’s Indian politics. It’s an extreme situation in India that ethics have become dispensable in the race for power, and integrity has become precariously unavailable to most.