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UNHAPPINESS IN THE STREETS: Supporters of the People's Television scuffling with police in Bangkok yesterday. -- REUTERS
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IN BANGKOK - SHARPLY mixed reactions yesterday greeted the Thai constitutional tribunal's decision to dissolve the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party and ban over 100 of its most senior members from politics for five years.
The mood in Bangkok was subdued - partly because yesterday was Vesak Day - and partly because fears of violence may have been overblown by the military regime in an attempt to cow people into staying home.
Some dailies hailed the verdict of the constitutional tribunal - which had found the party guilty of electoral fraud - as courageous.
'The verdicts serve as a lesson for unscrupulous politicians that they must play by the rules or face the consequences,' the Bangkok Post said in an editorial.
The Nation daily said a fractured Thai society could now begin to heal itself.
But political analysts remain by and large gloomy about the immediate prospects.
'We will see a deeper polarisation,' Chulalongkorn University political science professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak told The Straits Times.
He said there was now 'ample ground' for cooperation between the ruling generals and the Democrat Party. 'The generals want to work with politicians after the elections in the interest of their own self-preservation.'
Analysts said that while the dissolution of the TRT has created a window of opportunity for Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva to position himself as a potential prime minister, he can only be the head of a coalition government if he makes the right strategic alliances.
This is because his party is popular only in the south and parts of Bangkok, they said.
Grassroots networks in the rural north and north-east remain in the hands of the TRT, with little hope of the Democrats breaking in, taking into account the widespread bitterness over the court decision.
Wednesday's verdict in effect did not only disrupt the TRT; it also affected several political heavyweights who left the TRT after the September 2006 coup, but who were executive committee members of the party when the electoral fraud took place.
These include Mr Somsak Thepsuthin who has been waiting to register his Matchima ('middle way' in Thai) party, and Dr Somkid Jatusripitak, former finance minister and one of the architects of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra's pro-poor pumppriming.
Thailand's political landscape will thus remain in disarray for some time, with the legality of TRT members starting a new party with the same name in doubt.
Also in doubt is whether the TRT can appeal against the ban from politics on its executive committee members.
'It's a political massacre,' Asia Plus Securities' CEO Kongkiat Opaswongkarn told Reuters.
Many analysts noted that the judges on the nine-member tribunal took pains to lay out the cases against the parties.
In the case against the TRT, they catalogued a long list of complaints which echoed those that emerged over the last three years, culminating in the fierce opposition to Mr Thaksin seen in Bangkok in the first half of 2006.
As such, said Thai scholar Professor Michael Nelson, the judgment was more political than legal.
'The language of the judges showed their anger at politicians,' he said.
Many analysts noted that the judiciary had acted according to the prevailing political climate for the third time since 2001, when the constitutional tribunal voted narrowly to acquit Mr Thaksin of misdeclaring assets - a verdict that saved his political career then.
'The constitutional tribunal judges...are no longer seen as impartial but political,' Prof Thitinan wrote in a commentary hours before Wednesday's judgment.
'The judiciary as an institution is a major long-term casualty of Thailand's political crisis.'
The military regime's next hurdle on its intended return to democracy will be the referendum on the new Constitution in September.
nirmal@sph.com.sg
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