Thailand: Ruling Party Holds On to Power - For Now

[CrazyExpat]

Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his ruling Democrat Party dodged a legal bullet Monday when the country's Constitutional Court dismissed on technicalities the first two cases of election fraud that could have seen the party dissolved and Abhisit banned from politics for five years. But while the government's stability seems assured for now, all parties involved in the case - the Constitutional Court, police investigators, the Democrats and their opponents - saw their reputations tarnished as the cases progressed.

"Relieved, relieved. We were quite scared today," said former Democrat leader Banyat Bantadan as he left the court. Banyat was party chief in 2005 when the alleged electoral offenses were committed. The Democrats now form the core of a coalition government, and a ruling against them would have meant political chaos with the possibility that the government would have fallen.

The dismissal, however, is bound to deepen Thailand's periodically violent political divide. Anti-government protesters known as Red Shirts had pressured the Election Commission to prosecute the Democrats. They had seen two Red-supported parties, which formed the core of two previous governments, dissolved by the courts for electoral fraud, handing the reins of government to their opponents. The Red Shirts have alleged that the Democrats benefited from double standards, including preferential treatment by the courts, and Monday's ruling will only reinforce that perception. "And they call this Thai-style democracy," Pomjuk Pakwan, a Red supporter wrote on Ratchaprasong News, a Red Shirt website. (Read "After the Bloodletting, Bangkok Returns to Normal.")

The Constitutional Court never ruled whether the Democrats were innocent or guilty of the charge of misusing campaign funds. Instead they ruled that the Election Commission's process in handling the case was riven with errors and that it had not filed the case within the legal time limit. The Democrats have also been charged with receiving an illegal campaign contribution worth tens of millions of dollars, but a ruling on that case is not expected until sometime next year. Democrat Party lawyers were considering petitioning the court the drop the case on similar grounds.

Earlier in the year, the cases against the Democrat Party had seemed all but dead after the chairman of the Election Commission said the evidence was too weak to forward to prosecutors or the full Commission for consideration. But in early April, as tens of thousands of Red Shirt protesters descended on Bangkok in a bid to bring down the Democrat-led government, a Red Shirt mob invaded the Election Commission offices demanding it take up the cases. Not long afterward, the full Commission voted to send the cases to court. Red Shirt mobs had also invaded parliament, stripping security guards of their weapons and forcing government leaders to clamber over back walls to escape. Their protests, in which they occupied Bangkok's central business district for nearly two months, were crushed by the military in May. The two-month demonstration led to 91 deaths and more than 2,000 injured, including members of the security forces. (Watch a video from inside the Red Shirt camps.)

The bitterness engendered by political conflicts also permeated the court. Judges were secretly videotaped talking about the case by a clerk sympathetic to the Red Shirts who posted the clips on YouTube. The clips led columnists and opposition politicians to call the court's credibility into question. Evidence presented during the trial appeared to show that police investigators were linked to the opposition and had coerced witnesses and tampered with evidence.

Prime Minister Abhisit's term runs through the end of 2011, but he has hinted recently that he may call an election during the early part of next year. The Democrats won the second highest number of seats in parliament during the last election, and came to power after a Red-supported party was dissolved by the courts. Abhisit is anxious to gain an electoral mandate in hopes of ending Red Shirt protests against his government that have flared up repeatedly since he took office in late 2008.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2033404,00.html#ixzz16gs2VUiL