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POLITICS-THAILAND: Court Clears Path For Pro-Thaksin Gov’t

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jan 18 2008 (IPS) - Thailand came closer to having its first civilian government since the September 2006 coup on Friday after the supreme court threw out a case against the People Power Party (PPP), which won the most number of seats in the Dec. 23 general elections.

Friday’s verdict removed a hurdle that had come in the way of the new parliament convening its first session a month after the poll. The apex court ruled that it had no authority to hear the case, pointing out that the proper arbiter of the political dispute at hand was this South-east Asian nation’s constitution tribunal.

The lawsuit against the PPP was filed by a member of the Democrat Party, which won the second highest number of seats in a tussle that had 31 political parties vying for places in the 480-member parliament. While the PPP won 233 seats, some of which were nullified later by the elections commission (EC), the Democrats secured 165 seats.

What the court steered away from deciding was whether the PPP was acting as a proxy for the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love That- TRT) party. The TRT was the party led by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted from power by the military in the country’s 18th coup on Sep. 19, 2006. In May last year, a special tribunal appointed by the junta banned the TRT for violating the laws of a poll in 2006. Thaksin and 110 TRT leaders were also banned from politics for five years.

According to Chaiwat Sinsuwong, the plaintiff, the PPP was violating election laws by presenting itself as a proxy of the TRT during the campaign for the December poll. The PPP, in fact, did not shy away from its links to the TRT in the run up to the elections. It openly declared that it would implement some of the popular programmes of the TRT that had won wide support within the electorate, enabling it to secure thumping parliamentary majorities at the 2001 and 2005 general elections.

The court also ruled against another charge – out of the four brought before it – that was levelled by the Democrat’s Chiwat. That focused on a complaint about video compact discs (VCDs) of Thaksin that had been distributed to sections of the electorate to sway them into voting for the PPP.

Here again, the court ruled it had no authority, reports the website of the ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper. ‘’The case is under the authority of the Election Commission,’’ the English-language daily said, quoting the legal body.

‘’If the court had not ruled this way, it would have created a major crisis for democracy in the country,’’ Giles Ungpakorn, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ‘’This will now pave the way for a new government.’’

PPP officials have welcomed the verdict, according to members of the party IPS spoke with. Doubts had emerged about the PPP being able to form a new government after the elections. Besides the court case, the party was also faulted by the EC for allegedly committing electoral fraud in some constituencies. And then there were sections of the Thai press that raised questions on the suitability of Samak Sundaravej, a combative political figure and leader of the PPP, as prime ministerial candidate. The PPP leader had made no bones about acting the part of Thaksin’s proxy during the campaign and vowed to reinstate the populist policies pursued by the banned TRT.

The PPP’s victory, which was just short of a simple majority, was not well received by sections of this kingdom’s political elite, bureaucrats, palace loyalists and the junta that ruled the country for the past 16 months. The latter was pushing for parties other than the PPP with support from the urban electorate in Bangkok, where most votes were cast in favour of the Democrats.

But the PPP scored heavily in the country’s north and north-eastern provinces, former strongholds of the TRT, where a large slice of the rural poor live. Thailand’s rural and urban poor make up the largest vote bank out of the estimated 44.2 million eligible voters.

‘’The country will now have to accept the election’s verdict,’’ says Giles. ‘’The elite should not try to put anymore hurdles to stop the PPP forming a government.’’

Signs of reconciliation were very much on display as the week drew to an end, with the PPP announcing that it had secured commitments from six other parties to form a coalition, thus giving the new administration close to 320 seats. Included in this alliance will be the Chart Thai (Thai Nation) party and the Puea Pandin (For the Motherland) party.

Both these middle-size parties had held out from joining a PPP-led alliance during the past weeks, feeding the sense of uncertainty that gripped the country. While Chart Thai won 37 seats, Puea Pandin won 24 at the December poll, but, like it happened to the PPP and the Democrats, some of the winning candidates were disqualified or compelled to face a re-run for their respective seats by the EC.

‘’All coalition members had agreed (that) the prime minister should come from People Power,’’ Surapong Suebwonglee, secretary-general of the PPP, was quoted as having said in Friday’s edition of ‘The Nation’ newspaper.

Thailand has had a long history of coalition governments, some of them so fragile that they barely lasted two years. During the early 1990s, there were new coalition governments formed every year over a four-year period. The only break from this pattern came during the five years of the Thaksin administration, since the TRT had won enough seats to form a majority.