Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn yet again. It seems that he is back in the news is regarding, he is presently being investigated. It is my understanding he is currently on suspension; he was transferred to an inactive post for 60 days a few weeks back by the Prime Minister. We have been kind of keeping up with this because quite honestly I have been following the career trajectory of "Big Joke" ever since he was back in Thai Immigration. Quite honestly it's interesting and it ends up providing insight for folks into sort of the procedural issues associated with investigations here in Thailand.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: "Big Joke" accuses PM Srettha of malfeasance. Quoting directly: "If the case had been sent to the NACC (that is National Anti-Corruption Commission) in the first place, he would have been considered innocent pending the NACC's finding and by law he could not have been transferred out of the Police Force, Police General Surachate (that is "Big Joke") said." Quoting further: "Police General Surachate said that interrogators had handled the case in the first place instead of the NACC because there was a movement to prevent him being the next National Police Chief." Quoting further: "Prime Minister Srettha said later at Government House that the Royal Thai Police Office had proposed the suspension of Pol Gen Surachate and he would have been accused of malfeasance if he had blocked it. The case complied with the law and was free of prejudice Mr. Srettha said."

Clearly there are some conflict in terms of differing perceptions as to what's going on here. I kind of thought, as I've been watching this, I keep thinking of what we call the Exhaustion Doctrine in primarily American Administrative Law to provide something of an analogy, wherein it is sort of as if "Big Joke" has to go through an adjudicatory process and sort of exhaust all of his efforts to appeal that within the Thai Police before dealing with the sort of the normal, the standard formal Courts. Again that is not a perfect apples to apples comparison but I think it provides at least the framework for understanding this analogously, again via a prism of sort of the Common Law vernacular. 

That being said, this remains to be quite a controversial topic. It looks like "Big Joke" is going to go through a pretty harrowing adjudicatory process associated with this whole thing. How it all plays out remains to be seen. It is my understanding again these are allegations although there have been preliminary investigations which have made findings, there is not been a final investigation to final adjudication regarding guilt or innocence which apparently again they remain allegations and presumably we would see some sort of adjudication down the road. We will certainly keep people updated on this channel as this situation evolves.