The Deprivation of Political Rights and Criminal Punishment Through the Perspective of the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract

The deprivation of Political Rights measure, especially deprivation of the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at election measure is a measure that does not have a clear status yet which is a problem that has been debated whether it is a criminal law or not since there is an issue of retrospective enforcement by the Constitutional Court. These measures create a huge impact on people because they deprive rights and power of people under Democratic regime. Therefore, it is important whether the deprivation of Political Rights measure is a criminal offense and should be determined a status to set the regulation or not. European Court of Human Rights has been considered as a court that has rule status of the measures based on Human Rights Protection in many cases and release many noticeable rulings and criteria to be used to consider status of the measures which can be apply to determine status of plenty measures in Thailand. From the study, according to the European Court of Human Rights, the main factors that the court uses to consider status of the measures are enforcement purpose, condemnation, retribution, severity of measures, sources of measures and enforcement conditions. To consider the status of the deprivation of Political Rights measure together with these criteria, it shows that the European Court of Human Rights considers the status of the deprivation of Political Rights measure differently each case and each context which I found that there are some errors and mistakes from the trial of the European Court of Human Rights by using different criteria in each case. In my point of view, it is important to clearly specify which factors should be primarily taken to consider status of the measures which can be also called as a guideline. If the first criteria that should be taken cannot be clearly set, other factors will be consider accordingly. Otherwise, the consideration of status of the measures will only rely on context of each case. From my view, enforcement purpose, condemnation, retribution, severity of measures is the first group of criteria that shows the criminal offense characteristic. Also the deprivation of Political Rights measure, especially deprivation of the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at election measure have the characteristics of criminal punishment. Therefore, to enforce these measures is necessary to make it according to the principle of legality.