The Thai electoral commission is proposing 22 October for the new election. Any date over 90 days out will resolve the problem of the constitutional prohibition on candidates running for parties that they were not members of more than 90 days before the election. Many members of incumbent (and now caretaker) Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s TRT party would then be expected to defect to other parties.
This could be the key to resolving the “mess” in that it would weaken TRT and thus allow for an alternative majority party or coalition to emerge. Part of the underlying source of the mess is that the electoral reform worked too well. The adoption of the mixed-member majoritarian electoral system was meant to generate single-party majorities and nationalize party leadership. Well, it did!!
While no one would want Thailand to return to its previous situation of extreme fragmentation–both in terms of the number of parties and their lack of cohesion–somewhere between the recent situation and the former one there lies a happier (or at least less messy) medium
Meanwhile, the above-linked story also notes that Thaksin might be the no. 1 candidate on the TRT national party list, raising the possibility that he might renege on his earlier pledge not to remain head of the party or seek to be PM again.
[...] Elections are (had been) scheduled for October. The last elections were boycotted by all the opposition, and subsequently annulled by the Constitutional Court. Thaksin has been on and off about whether he would accept demands from the opposition–and even from within his own party–that he retire from active politics. In other words, political instability has been in the air for a while in Thailand. Still, it has been fifteen years since the last coup attempt (in a country where coups and attempted coups previously had been common). And, once again, the king–who has already shown his skills not only as mediator, but also as political analyst–may be called upon again to be the arbiter. Propagation: [...]
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes » Blog Archive » Coup in Thailand? — 19 September 2006 @ 15:18