Don stands firm, refuses to resign
Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai insisted yesterday he will not resign from office, saying his wife had already reduced her shareholding in a private company.
The minister appeared unperturbed by mounting pressure on him to resign his portfolio over the controversy surrounding his wife’s shareholding in a family company that was not declared in their joint statement of assets and liabilities when he took office.
The Election Commission (EC) ruled that his wife’s holding of more than 5% of the shares was in contravention of the 2017 constitution and that he, as a consequence, might not be qualified to serve on the cabinet.
He took office before the constitution was promulgated on April 6 last year.
Peppered with reporters’ questions, the smiling minister said if he had decided to quit he would not have been attending the weekly cabinet meeting yesterday. He would await the ruling by the Constitutional Court on the case against him filed by the EC, though.
Nevertheless, he said his wife had taken little notice of the shares since she inherited them from her father about 37 years ago.
Now she was aware of the problem she had already transferred some of the shares to their son and now held less than 5%.
“Any pressure people are talking about depends on their own interpretation. They may interpret it as pressure, or a matter of concern, or anything. That’s up to them,” he said.
“As for me, the answer is on my face. I assure you that I am not under pressure and will carry on with my work as usual. My wife has already cleared her shareholdings, which she inherited from her father 37 years ago,” the minister said.
“As the law prohibits a cabinet minister or spouse from holding shares exceeding 5%, those involved must follow it,’’ the minister said. However, he did not elaborate on the issue. Throughout the press questioning the minister kept smiling and gave a thumbs-up to show he was not worried.
Isra news agency reported on Sunday that Mr Don’s wife Narirat transferred some shares in two firms to their son Puen Pramudwinai on Oct 9 last year, two years after Mr Don took office on Aug 19, 2015.
The shareholding issue was raised by Ruangkrai Leekitwattana, a legal adviser to the Pheu Thai Party, who filed a petition last year demanding an investigation into the shareholdings of nine cabinet ministers. The EC looked into the cases and cleared eight of the ministers. It voted 3:2 against clearing Mr Don after learning that his wife did not disclose her 5% shareholding in a family firm.
Acontroversial decision by the Election Commission (EC) has put the prime minister and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai in an uncomfortable place. On one hand, being in evident violation of an anti-corruption clause in the 2017 constitution, he should resign. But the devil of this case is in the details, because in technical terms the minister has not breached that new law at all. The EC wants the Constitutional Court to decide, but in this case, no court decision will satisfy everyone.
The terms of the case are so simple that it is easy to wonder why the EC even decided against the foreign minister. The new constitution, Section 187, states clearly that neither a minister nor a minister’s spouse can control shares or even be employed by an asset-management company. They may either or both own shares, but only if they inform the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and turn control of the shares to a blind trust or an equivalent. Mr Don’s wife Narirat owns more than 5% of a private company, which has not been named publicly.
Those all are facts, but there’s more. The constitution, promulgated in April, 2017, states that an incoming minister must inform the NACC of such stock holdings within 30 days of beginning the job. Mr Don, officially became Minister of Foreign Affairs on Aug 23, 2015. It was therefore impossible for him to follow a law that would not even come into force for nearly two years.
In effect, the EC has called for Mr Don to be fired because he did not follow a law that wasn’t even written. And the commission wants the Constitutional Court to make this official and remove Mr Don from office. This is convoluted thinking on the part of the EC, blatantly unfair and possibly illegal. It is a part of routine justice that no one can be charged and convicted of a crime for which there is no law. But that is the current dilemma for Mr Don and the Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
Mr Don is a lifetime diplomat, with no visible political biases. He has served the country since 1974, meaning under every party, military dictator and military-directed regime. No taint of scandal has touched him for those 44 years, although that is common to a ministry often praised as highly professional. Among many other postings, he has been ambassador to China and North Korea, the United States and the United Nations.
Section 187 of the constitution is a reasonable and sensible check on members of the government — the next government and those after it. It makes it illegal for a minister or his relatives to have either jobs or financial holdings in any company that might do business with the government. No one argues this is a bad idea. But booting Mr Don from the current government over this case is beyond questionable.
The EC is an independent body, even though its members have been appointed (and in one case dismissed) by the current regime. It is operating from constitutional authority. While it has the right to effectively put Mr Don on trial, the public and Gen Prayut’s government have the right to criticise their decision.
If Mr Don or Ms Narirat were accused of unsavoury conduct over the shares she owns, this would be an easy case to decide. They are not. On the contrary, the single charge against the couple is that they failed to know two years in advance of a new law and requirement.
This case does not merit reaching the Constitutional Court. Steps should be taken to withdraw the EC’s charges and its request for the Constitutional Court judges to take up the accusation. The attempt to purge an upstanding (and outstanding) chief diplomat over such a questionable and ultimately petty issue should be reversed.
In this case, no court decision will satisfy everyone.