Another 12-month journey around the sun and another trail of ironies and unpredictability. This year is ending with the planet earth telling humans again that nothing is certain, that no knowledge shall be regarded as foolproof, and that moral lessons shall never be monopolised.
Biggest news stories of 2023 revolved around the uncertainty, hypocrisy, injustice disguised as justice, law-enforcement scandals and how man inexplicably reacts differently to sufferings of the innocent.
In Thailand, no news is bigger than Move Forward winning the May 14 election but winding up in the opposition. In the process, Pheu Thai became the ruling party, forming a government with the conservatives, installing Srettha Thavisin as prime minister and ushering Thaksin Shinawatra back from exile. The Democrat Party’s hemorrhage continued, with Abhisit Vejjajiva being the latest high-profile departure.
Debate can last forever over who is right and who is wrong, but talk about unpredictability.
Globally, there are two big news that magnify human contradictions. The first one is a war. Israel revenged a terror attack on its territory with a cruel and much-condemned military campaign in Gaza. This discredited not just the Israeli rulers but also Washington, which puts many eggs in the Netanyahu basket.
The second one is a natural disaster. The aftermath of the massive earthquakes in Turkey and Syria made the Gaza casualties and sufferings inexplicable. For a change, heavy equipment and machinery were mobilised from all parts of the world to one destination to save lives, not destroy them; religious and political differences were forgotten, not amplified; and headlines of international broadcasting networks focused succinctly on harmony and sad truth, not divisiveness and well-constructed lies.
And for a change, governments and experts studied national maps featuring natural fault lines for possibility of unstoppable problems, not ones that show manmade “strategic” or “religious” locations that can cause all kinds of troubles that were in fact preventable.
Most ironic perhaps is the fact that flattened landscapes where buildings once stood and smoldering rubbles were cried over without exception. Countries shed tears in unison. No politicians needed to save their faces. No UN resolutions were packed with political agendas.
Such irony is common throughout human history. However, that the earthquakes and Gaza horror happened back to back in a year made 2023 stand out.
Back to Thailand, three crime stories tested the public faith in the justice system and showcased law-enforcement flaws or problems like never before. They were the blatant killing of a policeman at a dinner party of a community leader known as Kamnan Nok, the daring escape from prison of an influential inmate known as Pang Nanode, and the upcoming verdict on a murder defendant Chaiyaphol Vipa who is unprecedentedly using social media to proclaim innocence and getting rich and famous in the process.
Before the policeman’s death, Praween Chanklai, aka Kamnan Nok, allegedly made senior police officers strip almost naked “for fun” at one of his “parties”, fired celebratory shots into the sky, was accused of involvement in questionable business deals, and listened proudly to “Happy Birthday to you” sung respectfully by senior bureaucrats. Investigators suspected there was an extensive bribery payroll.
The alleged arrogance led to the tragic and unbelievable incident in September. Stunned Thais realised that, very gross and obvious as they were, rural corruption and rampant bribery had been gravely underestimated. Everyone had known it was rotten, but the case shed some light on how rotten it actually was.
The Kamnan Nok incident has at least provided the Thai public with some immunity. When Chaowalit Thongduang, aka “Sia Pang Nanode”, escaped from hospital detention in October, Thais were dismayed rather than actually surprised. However, instead of laying low, he has grabbed the nation’s attention with sensational allegations in video clips posted to social media, in the process taunting the Thai authorities hunting him.
The allegations targeted several high-ranking officials. This puts Chaowalit and Kamnan Nok in the same curious category as holders of big secrets. (Due to the magnitude of their cases, the two shall not be called whistleblowers.)
On December 20, less than a week from now, the Criminal Court in Mukdahan will hand down a verdict on a case that once captivated Thailand. No matter how the Loong Phol story ends, it will be historic.
If Chaiyaphol Vipa or “Loong Phol” is set free, it can bring a trail-blazing and highly-controversial defense strategy into sharp focus. But on the other hand, if his unprecedented use of social media fails to prevent a murder conviction, the celebrated defendant will have lost to the conventional justice system and a lot of Thais, not least certain major entertainment and news personalities, will have dropped their jaws.
Apart from Loong Phol, the case features a mother who lost her child but, initially, could not leave her home because much of the world, influenced by both mainstream and social media, thought she did it herself. He is the girl’s uncle-in-law who became a police suspect and court defendant but was engulfed in a groundswell of public sympathy and massive donations.
An unbelievable from-rags-to-riches real-life story was written, with him managing to buy a huge plot of land, a family van, and create a superstitious aga park in which colourful celebrations took place a few days ago.
Loong Phol’s case is local, but it involves a lot of universal human flaws that led to jealousy, business conflicts, thought manipulations and even suspected fraud and controversial money making. Ones can understand better how media powers can be abused and how suspicious superstitious beliefs came about on the global scale.
All of the above-mentioned news, though, can pale beside the least-mentioned one, at least among those outside the science community. This year marks the biggest turning point in mankind’s understanding of the entire universe thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope.
Its discoveries have been profound, threatening to shatter the most sophisticated knowledge about when the big bang happened, if it is what we think it is, what happened after that, how galaxies and stars are born and how soon or how quick they can form.
Only approaching the second anniversary of its launch, many key and basic cosmological assumptions or theories are being challenged very seriously, because of unprecedented photos of objects that should never have existed. And James Webb has just begun.
By Tulsathit Taptim
