Prohibiting Politician Officers from Being the Owners of, or Shareholders in the Media Business according to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand, BE 2560 (2017)

Abstract

After the 2006 coup in Thailand, the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand, BE 2560 (2007), prohibited Thai politicians from owning shares in media companies to prevent an interference in media freedom and ensure that they would not be able to use media power against their opponents. However, there was no determination of legal consequences in case of violation of the law. Later, after the 2014 coup, the Constitution, BE 2560 (2017), prohibited the members of the House of Representatives (MP) candidates and senate candidates from owning media shares and stated the consequences in case of violation, i.e., being terminated from the political position. This article aimed to briefly review the decisions by the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court in the case of politicians owning media shares, the law in other countries regarding holding of media shares by politicians, and to criticize whether the Thailand laws complied with what is stipulated in Section 77 of the 2017 Constitution. In the author's opinion, the prohibition on politicians from holding media shares in the 2017 Constitution was inconsistent with Section 77 of the Constitution due to the following reason: the law could not be enforced because politicians could influence the media in many ways without owning shares, and the law was difficult to understand, as evidenced by the inconsistencies between the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court. The decisions of the Supreme Court followed the letter of the law rather than considering the content (fact) and the spirit of the law. This represented “hyper-legalism” of the court.  In addition, the law was impractical in the era of social media that allows people to access and share the information in real-time using many free social media platforms; anyone could be “a media”.