Tensions high as Thai parties wait for judgment day

THAILAND: Senior Thai judges will this week decide whether to dissolve the kingdom's two largest political parties, with huge implications for the post-coup landscape here ahead of planned polls.

Thai Rak Thai (TRT), the party formed by the ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the Democrat Party, Thailand's oldest, face a slew of electoral fraud charges related to annulled elections in April last year.

A constitution tribunal will announce their fate on Wednesday, in a potentially divisive ruling which comes after more than a year of political upheaval culminating in the September 19 putsch.

The junta which seized power has promised to hold a referendum on their new constitution ahead of planned elections by December, but analysts say dissolving Thailand's main parties could plunge the country into disarray.

"It would cause so many unforeseeable consequences that the whole thing - the constitution, referendum, elections - will be thrown into utter chaos," said Michael Nelson, a political analyst at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

The allegations of electoral fraud stem from snap polls held on April 2, after months of street protests against Thaksin. TRT won the election, but an opposition boycott led the constitutional court to invalidate the results.

TRT has been charged with breaking two laws - illegally financing smaller parties to contest the election in a bid to boost the polls' credibility, and misusing the supposedly independent election commission.

The Democrat Party, which ruled Thailand on and off for a decade before TRT first swept the polls in 2001, faces four charges of electoral fraud including obstructing political campaigning and slandering TRT.

Three other minor parties linked to TRT and the Democrat Party are facing similar charges on Wednesday. If the constitution tribunal finds one or more of them guilty of vote fraud, they can dissolve the party, which means they will no longer exist under their current guise, but senior members can simply move to another party.

In the worst case scenario, the tribunal could ban the party executive - 119 senior politicians in TRT and 49 in the Democrat Party - from politics for five years. Such a move would significantly alter Thailand's political landscape, analysts say.

"If we send them all to the political wilderness, who would be there to administer the country?" said Nelson. In a rare speech last week amid reports of possible unrest, Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej told senior judges that whatever the verdict, it would probably cause trouble.

Bangkok, Monday, AFP