By Max Constant
BANGKOK
A Thai activist monk has accused a clergyman nominated to lead the country’s Buddhist establishment of being unfit for the post, due to his involvement in a tax scandal and protection of a wealthy temple with alleged connections to a divisive political clan.
“If someone in your country is involved in a tax fraud scandal, could he be elected or appointed to lead the country as prime minister or president? No, isn’t it?” Phra Buddha Issara -- who led anti-government protests leading up to the 2014 coup -- asked in an interview with Anadolu Agency Saturday.
“For us, the Supreme Patriarch [the Thai Buddhist church’s leader] is even more important than a president or a prime minister because he is the leader of the faith,” Buddha Issara said at his Or Noi temple in western Thailand.
“And if he is involved in a fraud scandal, we cannot accept it,” he added.
The comments by the monk -- who has led several demonstrations since the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted in a May 2014 coup he applauded -- addressed a months-long controversy over the appointment of a successor to the previous Supreme Patriarch, who died in 2013.
In January, the Supreme Sangha Council -- the top administrative organization of Thailand’s monastic community -- nominated for the post the senior monk holding the highest title, 90-year-old Somdej Chuang.
The appointment of Chuang, however, has been blocked since, following accusations that he tried to evade tax payments on a vintage Mercedes Benz given to him by a devotee.
While police launched an investigation into the case, Chuang has refused to respond to questioning.
Behind what might appear as simply a controversy over a minor infraction lies a religious and political struggle for authority over the 200,000 monks who make up the Thai monastic community, or “sangha”.
The main motivation behind the campaign against Chuang’s appointment is his protection of the enormous Wat Dhammakaya temple, a wealthy and controversial temple located just north of Bangkok that opponents accuse of distorting Buddhist principles.
“It is known across the world that the Dhammakaya temple has been distorting the teachings of Buddhism, by saying that if you make donation, you will get richer and richer,” Buddha Issara said Saturday.
“Somdej Chuang has been the mentor of Dhammakaya temple’s abbot, Phra Dhammachayo, and he [Chuang] is a very senior monk, but he never said anything to his disciple who breached Buddhist discipline,” he underlined.
Controversies over the temple are compounded by its alleged links to the Shinawatra political clan, whose leader Thaksin -- Yingluck’s elder brother – served as prime minister from 2001 until his overthrow in a 2006 coup.
Few commentators and Buddhist scholars have spoken positively about Wat Dhammakaya, or even Somdej Chuang.
Buddhist scholar Sulak Sivaraksa told Anadolu Agency earlier this week that while he did not see eye to eye with Buddha Issara on many matters, he agreed with the monk activist’s stance on the Supreme Patriarch issue.
“Somdej Chuang is not capable of becoming Supreme Patriarch,” he said. “He has been supporting the Dhammakaya temple undeservedly, even after the late Supreme Patriarch wrote a letter clearly condemning the abbot of the temple because he cheated money.”
Sivaraksa stressed that under Buddhist teachings “a monk who cheated money is no longer a monk.”
Since the mid-1990s, the Dhammakaya temple has been involved in a number of financial scandals, often involving land donations -- with several legal cases filed against the temple, only to be withdrawn under Thaksin's premiership.
For Phra Buddha Issara, this is no a coincidence.
“It is not possible to change history. It is very clear that Thaksin helped Phra Dhammachayo to avoid a jail term,” he said Saturday.
“Thaksin wrote a letter to the authorities in charge, saying that it was better to stop the legal case against Dhammachayo and the Dhammakaya temple in the name of reconciliation,” he added.
Over the past ten years, as Thailand has been destabilized by a political crisis -- punctuated by street demonstrations, military coups and massacres of civilians -- the turmoil has spread to the monastic community, where monks have become divided along political lines.
While some associate with the mostly rural-based “Red Shirts” -- supporters of Thaksin who advocate social change and electoral democracy -- others are lining up behind the conservative “Yellow Shirts”, who defend the status quo as well as the bureaucratic and military domination of society.
For Buddhist scholar Vichak Panich, Yellow Shirts currently have by far the upper hand.
“Buddhism has become a political tool for the elite. It has become a tool of the social structure from above to oppress the people, crushing their freedom and their rights to participate and make change,” he told Anadolu Agency in a recent interview.
