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Published on April 8, 2008

He has filed a petition with the Election Commission accusing the PPP of acting as the nominee for ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra's defunct Thai Rak Thai Party. The EC has set up a working group to look into his petition.

When he was very young, his father, a middle-ranking bureaucrat, resigned from the Public Relations Department. He learnt from his father how the bureaucracy has little space for honest officials to stand up and advance their careers.

Veera's father quit because he could not stand the corruption and abuse of power he was witnessing.

"My father told me if you become a civil servant and act squarely and not follow the whim of your superior, then you cannot expect career advancement. And that's when I realised that I'm not someone who would kow-tow to anybody. Today the bureaucracy hasn't changed."

Having studied at the prestigious Suan Kulab school, Veera eventually became a student activist and went through both the tumultuous events of October 14, 1973 and October 6, 1976 before fleeing into the jungle while he was still a student at Ramkhamhaeng University. His father, meanwhile eventually became a tour operator.

His stint in the jungles of southern Thailand as a cadre of the Communist Party of Thailand did not last long. He fled in less than a year and recalled that he wanted to learn about Marxist ideology in China or the Soviet Union, but was told to fight a guerrilla war instead. He came out of the jungle of Surat Thani province in 1977 and returned to Bangkok where he was born, but spent the next two years "floating" around and in semi-hiding as the government had yet to grant amnesty to former communist insurgents.

Veera soon decided to enter the monkhood, a decision that would lead him to rediscover Buddhism after years of seeing the faith as exploitative.

"As a teenager I was into Marxism and I was lost for a while. I shunned Buddhism and paid no respect to monks. But in 1980, a friend handed me a book by Buddhadassa Bhikku - and that book was very bizarre," recalled Veera, as he discovered the book was very scientific and rational. Veera eventually became a disciple of both Buddhadassa Bhikku and another famous monk, Ajarn Cha, and spent most of his monkhood travelling in the forest.

Five years later he had to give up the monkhood upon the death of his father in order to take over the running of the family's tour agency.

But it wasn't until the May 1992 uprising that Veera would be redirected toward a life of activism as an anti-corruption crusader. Veera, who was beaten by soldiers after being arrested together with other protesters at the Royal Hotel, eventually realised that "corruption" has always been a pretext for the military to stage a coup d'etat.

"And the thing that I thought would happen, happened again in 2006," he said, referring to the latest coup with corruption allegations against then-prime minister Thaksin as the excuse.

 In 1996, Veera and colleagues formed the Peoples' Rights and Freedom Protection Group. In 2000, Veera became widely known after his first major anti-corruption case against then Democratic Party's secretary-general Sanan Kachornpra-sart, who gave false information about his wealth prior to taking office. This led to the banning of Sanan from politics for five years. By 2001, the People Network Against Corruption, of which Veera is currently the chairman, was formed. In a twist of irony, the man who presided over the inauguration of the network was then-PM Thaksin, the man who would eventually became a target of Veera's numerous campaigns.

"I'm the first who forwarded a case against Thaksin back in 2003. I never believed he was a good man because I saw he had lied many times," Veera said, adding he had known Thaksin early on in his political career as a member and later as leader of the now defunct Palang Dharma Party.

But before Thaksin could be found guilty by another court there was the coup of September 2006. Veera, who was among the 20 core leaders of the anti-Thaksin People's Alliance for Democracy, denied he supported the coup.

He said there are many anti-corruption laws in Thailand but what is lacking is the honest enforcement of them. He blames the capitalist economic system and moral degradation as being behind the widespread corruption the country faces.

"It makes people want to obtain things easily, to do whatever it takes without having to sweat. And one way of achieving that is to cheat. And so it has become commonplace," he said, referring to Thailand's high ranking in many international corruption surveys.

 Thai society also lacks role models, said Veera, and this is precisely why he's still doing what he does.

"I alone may not be able to change anyone but I can maintain my ideology. It will set an example. If there are only bad examples, what will children be able to aspire to?"

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation