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THE NATION

2 June 2007

 

 

Chuan's experience 'saved the party'

 

 

The Democrat Party's defence team in the electoral fraud case was originally chaired by former party leader Banyat Bantadtan, who then invited former party leader and former prime minister Chuan Leekpai to take the chair.

 

"After a few meetings we realised we needed a very talented lawyer with a little charisma," former Phatthalung MP Nipit Intarasombat said.

 

Nipit said the Democrat Party's legal team had worked so hard and deliberately on the case that some of the staff were often reduced to tears.

 

He said the party's chief adviser, Chuan Leekpai, who became head of the team, was so strict about the case that the team was able to close most loopholes in its defence and refute all allegations against the party.

 

Chuan, a veteran lawyer, had to comfort the team members and staff from time to time, Nipit said.

 

Because of the hard work and pressure, senior lawyers had to encourage the staff. Their experience working on this case would help them become good, well-trained lawyers, he said.

 

The team met for two days a week at first, then three and four days a week, as the hearings went on. They were on stand-by most of the time and enjoyed very few holidays.

 

"We had to be available for meetings at any time," Nipit said.

 

The team was divided into four groups, each taking charge of one of the four allegations against the party. They wrote the defence statement and went through intensive witness rehearsals.

 

"We wrote the statements and did the rehearsals at the same time. If we studied and wrote the statement in the morning, we had the rehearsal in the afternoon, and vice versa," he said. We sometimes had rehearsals until midnight."

 

After the group rehearsal, the witnesses would be brought to the team's meeting. The team members would grill the witness fiercely and ask every possible question to make sure they could give clear answers to the Constitution Tribunal. The lawyers also prepared the defendants on how to respond if the Tribunal objected to their statements, he said.

 

Witnesses sometimes broke into tears when they faced tough questioning at the rehearsals.

 

"Chuan was very careful about every detail, including word spelling. After we finished writing the statements, we had to read them out for Chuan so he could comment. Sometimes he closed his eyes and we thought he was sleeping, but he wasn't. He reminded us what we had missed," Nipit said.

 

"Some questions were difficult to ask and I was reluctant to ask them - for example, about former Thai Rak Thai MP Tawee Suraban's popularity. Chuan stressed I had to ask the question because it was crucial, so I did ask it during the hearings," Nipit said.

 

Former Songkhla MP Wirat Kalayasiri, a member of the legal team, said the team had been confident the party would not be dissolved because it has been "set up". However, the party owed a large part of its victory to Chuan.

 

"We won the case because we had Chuan. He is a determined, honest and straight man. Tribunal members and judges and people both in Thailand and abroad trust him," Wirat said.

 

A legal expert who asked not to be named said he had read the Democrat's closing statement and he was convinced by it.

 

He said if he had been a Constitution Tribunal member, he would have concluded that the party was not guilty.

 

The Democrat's closing statement was so well-written that The tribunal gave it as one of the reasons behind its verdict, he said.

 

Chuan Leekpai graduated from Thammasat University's Faculty of Law in 1962. He started his career as lawyer at Chor Chanasongkram Law Firm, but later switched to politics.

 

He began his political career as a Democrat MP for Trang in 1969 and has been re-elected ever since.

 

Chuan was the Democrat leader from 1991-2003, and was prime minister from 1992-1995 and 1997-2000.

 

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