It has taken more than three months for Thailand's second most powerful man in the government to finally achieve the basic task of giving the anti-graft agency information about his watches.
Yet the Thai public is still in doubt whether the unnecessarily lengthy process of probing 25 luxury wristwatches, seen worn by Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon on various occasions, will come to an end anytime soon.
The public needs to know how come the general with modest income can afford to have the collection of wristwatches valued at 39.5 million baht in total in his possession and whether this involves asset concealment.
Any effort to drag out this disappointing, inefficient and dubious "investigation", however, will cement the public's growing mistrust of both Gen Prawit and the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), which handles the case. It will also further shaken the credibility of the military government which seized power from an elected government and vowed to tackle corruption.
In late December, Gen Prawit submitted a letter to the NACC explaining nine expensive watches seen worn by him in pictures exposed on social media since the beginning of the month. Unfortunately, such explanation was insufficient simply because he excluded, intentionally or unintentionally, details about other 16 wristwatches that the CSI LA Facebook page had later on exposed from pictures of him wearing them in various occasions.
The additional public exposure prompted the NACC to send four more requests since January to Gen Prawit to submit information about the rest of his watch collection. After having postponed three times, Gen Prawit finally made it on Thursday, the last day of the last deadline.
The luxury watches were not declared among his assets to the NACC and Gen Prawit claimed they all belonged to friends and have since been returned.
Since then, the NACC has questioned six friends whom Gen Prawit referred to as owners of the watches. But its secretary-general, Worawit Sukboon, was earlier reluctant to disclose details about the accounts given by both Gen Prawit and his friends.
The whole saga demonstrates the failure of the deputy PM to be open and straightforward about his possession or borrowing of these watches. He should have given all the information about all the 25 watches in the first place at once. The fact that he only provided more information after having been requested to do so makes people feel that he has something to hide.
The scandal has also further put the NACC into a negative light. The agency has extended the deadlines and has barely made progress on the probe. In fact, there are only a few basic conclusions the anti-graft agency needs to make.
First, it must establish whether there is an asset concealment. If all the watches belong to Gen Prawit's friends as claimed, then it can demand those friends to submit their purchase receipts, customs clearance documents and warranty papers which demonstrate their ownership. Without such documents verified for any watch, their ownership claim does not carry credible weight.
Then the burden of proof will fall on the shoulders of Gen Prawit. If he is the owner, then he must clarify when he bought them, what sources of money he spent on the watches, and whether he had paid customs duties for importing them, the same way the average Thais do.
Second, if all the friends can prove that they owned the timepieces with verified documents, then the NACC is duty-bound to prove whether this is considered gift-giving and thus violates the conflict of interest law that bars officials and public office holders from receiving gifts worth 3,000 baht or more. It has to find out what motives those friends have in lending their ultra expensive watches to Gen Prawit, and then prove whether the claimed motives are credible.
For the case involving one of the most influential policymakers of the country, the NACC cannot afford to take it too lightly. With its previous records of investigations of corruption allegations against other leaders of the military regime, the NACC has not earned much public trust. It had dismissed these cases without providing credible and sufficient explanations.
This time, the public will not let the scandal being buried easily.
When the NACC proceeded with a case against former prime minister Yingluck Shinwatra over her role in the supervision of the rice-pleding scheme, malfeasance was used as a ground against her, not a corruption charge.
The NACC may see itself being alleged of malfeasance if it fails to proceed with this luxury watch case in a straightforward, timely and open manner. Its conclusion of this probe needs to be done soon. It cannot be dragged out indefinitely.