If he speaks out, deputy police chief Surachate Hakparn has warned, the entire Police Department would crumble. He possibly couldn’t be any more wrong.

The whole police force crumbled the minute he uttered that sentence. It doesn’t matter if he is being politically persecuted, or if he does know something, of if he was just making an empty threat. What he said bodes ill for himself, and for the Police Department.

It’s a bullet that destroys his own dignity even if what he said was true. This was a man once tipped to become the head of the Thai police someday, so what does his warning say in the grand scheme of things? That he was keeping some dark secrets about the organization that is supposed to protect public interests and defend the innocent people who can’t defend themselves?

That he knows the secrets is one of two possibilities. The other possibility is that he was only bluffing because he did not know that much. Either way, however, what has been left of public trust in the Thai police is getting blown away. If he was telling the truth, the Police Department is rotten to its core, a situation that will likely continue if he becomes the next chief of police and therefore chooses to stay silent. If he was lying, how come a liar managed to go so far in the police hierarchy and how many top cops at present and in the future are like him?

The police reputation is falling through a bottomless abyss. Ironically, it was Surachate who was the first to virtually admit that if the Kamnan Nok saga was going to cause widespread damage, then so be it. When he was being the front man handling the Nakhon Pathom affair, it did help paint him as among the “good ones.”

Then his home was raided as part of what looked like a climaxing investigation into online gambling racketeering. The rest is history. The travesty of the Kamnan Nok episode was followed by the disgrace befalling the man who led the initial probe into the shocking dinner party, and then Surachate’s own, inexplicable claim that he knew a lot but chose not to speak out.

So, Surachate has turned from a potential hero into a potential villain in the online gambling investigation and an undeniable bad guy in the world of Thai police secrecy. His threat to avenge what he described as attempts to taint his reputation is killing many birds with one stone. Only that one of the birds is his own integrity as a protector of truth and justice.

In other words, anything except Surachate’s decision not to publicise secrets that would make “the whole department dies” is defensible. Even Kamnan Nok

is entitled to legal defense. Surachate’s accusers, meanwhile, can have the benefit of the doubt, at least for now. Surachate himself can fight the online gambling suspicion. The ethical, moral and legal messes seen in his “I know everything” claim, however, are impossible to cleanse.

It’s not just the police, though. We are only seeing a big example of how powers can corrupt. In every corridor of power, people only start washing dirty laundry in public when friendship, or partnership, or comradeship, or chain of command, breaks apart, or when vested interest, shady or else, is in serious danger. Secrets are exposed not primarily by whistleblowers, but friends who turn foes.

As for the Thai public, is it good that top cops are exposing one another for fun? A lot may say it’s better than nothing, so the phenomenon can be painful and welcome at the same time. The catch is that there’s no exposure that cannot be fixed, especially when those at war are at peace again. In case exposure is needed to be fought off, often-used key words like“traitors”or “resentful with an agenda”can come in handy.

It’s hard to see positives in the whole saga, not when we know full well that there are layers of secrets and, shocking as it seems, the on-going police civil war may just only scratch the surface.

Secrets like ones Surachate is talking about come and go. Even if we are witnessing exposure of the ultimate secrets, they will always be replaced by new ones and people willing to keep them are never in short supply.

Tulsathit Taptim