Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "per se". Why are we discussing "per se"? Well as I said in another video regarding the proposed end of the Mask Mandate, I was going to make kind of a companion video; this one is a little bit more of shall we say an opinion piece, my opinion specifically. But yeah there are certain things that not only boggle my mind but make me want to pull my hair out and when I was reading the upcoming what I am going to quote here, it did both. So quoting directly from ASEAN NOW, that is aseannow.com, this is an article titled: Thai Ministry of Public Health to propose ending mask mandates by mid-June. As we discussed in another video on this topic, yes that does look like what they are going to do.

As folks that have watched this channel with any frequency over the past year or so will probably be aware, I have done pretty substantial analysis into the Communicable Diseases Act here in Thailand and I have been keeping up with this topic very, very I hope rigorously and diligently just sort of staying on top of it. The Minister of Public Health himself has said there is no laws under girding this so-called mandate which then begs the question, so what is it? But let's quote directly from this article. Again, Thai Ministry of Public Health to propose ending mask mandates by mid-June. That is ASEAN NOW, aseannow.com, quoting: "Currently, there is a mask mandate in every province in Thailand in all public areas, including outdoors or even riding a motorbike alone. This isn't a law, per se, but it is an enforceable legal mandate under the current Emergency Decree that was just extended until the end of July." Let me read that again, okay? "This isn't a law, per se, but it is an enforceable legal mandate under the current Emergency Decree that was just extended until the end of July." Yeah. No, it's not. I have read the Communicable Diseases Act and I have read the regulatory provisions springing therefrom and I just don't think this statement is correct. I have tried to stay kind of mellow about this. I am not particularly angry at anyone but I will say one thing that has really bothered me watching this is the media and how they discuss this, okay? First of all, I remember being in law school. I was taking Conflicts of Law, I had a really good professor for that. He was the Dean for a while and he just wanted to be the professor. He's a really very brilliant legal scholar and Conflicts of Law was very, it gets almost to the level of legal esoteria when you are getting into conflicts of law if it can become very esoteric. I mean there is no other real word for it. It's very conceptual even though you are dealing with legal notions that can be very concrete it can be very, very conceptual and parsing things out can be difficult. But, I have to say I will never forget being in that course and I can't remember exactly what we were talking about but some Latin phrase popped up in the middle of this really complex brief we were reviewing and I will never forget him saying "hey, when they pull out the Latin, your red flag should go up, your warning bell should go off because when they are pulling out the Latin it's because there's some stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense." It just seems to be the case. And again I know this isn't a legal tract but this statement I just I can't even hardly wrap my head around it. "This isn't a law, per se." Okay, so it's not a law, but "it's an enforceable legal mandate." Why? Why is that being stated? What legal basis is that statement resting upon? We have done the analysis of the Communicable Diseases Act. I can't find anything in there; as we have stated before there seems to be certain things that can be prohibited but a mask mandate is not a prohibition, it's a coercion. We're not talking about the same thing. It's not apples and apples when we are talking about the Communicable Disease Act and this has been backed up by the Public Health Minister himself who said there is no law under girding this and in a civil law jurisdiction such as Thailand, it is my understanding admittedly as something of a legal outsider, although someone who has studied Thai Law for a prolonged period of time, especially in a comparative capacity, comparing it to the common law and the way that we do things in the common-law system but one of the main foundations, one of the foundational concepts of the Civil Law is that if something is not specifically codified in law then it is nothing. That's how the Civil Law works because in a civil law country, in both a civil and a common law country, maintaining the peoples’ freedoms is one of the reasons the law exist and so in a Civil Law System, one of the mechanisms for doing that is the concept that if it is not clearly written out, then it is legal, sort of "de facto" as we would say and here I am pulling out the Latin but "de facto", by default as we would say in a common law sort of analysis.

So where I am coming from here is I just am pretty tired of this being sort of operating this colour of law where they are saying well "it is not a law per se, but it is an enforceable mandate." Well why do you say that? I have seen no legal basis for stating that especially when you consider that these prohibitions, these coercions would have to spring from duly drafted law in order to be enforceable. So again my frustration I think at this point is more with the media than any other place because this just is a nonsensical statement. I'll read it one more time: "This isn't a law, per se, but it is an enforceable legal mandate under the current Emergency Decree that was just extended until the end of July." As we discussed I believe last year back in April at length, I did a half hour video going through this line by line, based on that analysis I am sorry to say that this is just simply a nonsensical statement.