Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s early-election gambit was probably intended to secure a fresh early mandate while the opposition was unprepared for a poll and with his own party benefiting from its considerable rural strength. If so, it was apparently working, because the opposition has decided to boycott the 2 April election. You only boycott when you can’t win.
On the other hand, a boycott by the opposition is also a crisis for the government (as I noted back in December regarding the boycott in Venezuela), because the absence of any opposition presence in a “campaign” and in the resulting legislature only plays into an opposition’s criticisms of the government as corrupt and the electoral playing field as unfair.
Boycott calls, and actual boycotts, are, like war, a continuation of politics through other means.
Thaksin has now proposed to delay the election
Seed planted by RAC — 28 February 2006 @ 17:53