Thaksin's party vows to fight on

Amy Kazmin from Bangkok

DEFIANT politicians from Thailand's Thai Rak Thai (Thais love Thais) party, founded by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said last Thursday they would seek to re-register the party so it could compete in forthcoming polls, in spite of a military tribunal ruling that dissolved it and barred its leaders from politics.
Despite fears of violent protests, Bangkok appeared calm on the day, with tight security around the city. Privately, many Thais expressed anger at what they saw as a highly politicised decision to dissolve a party that revolutionised Thai politics by aggressively wooing the rural poor while antagonising traditional elites and affluent urban voters.
Chaturon Chaiseng, acting party leader since the September coup that ousted Mr Thaksin, said he was dismayed at a verdict that implicitly endorsed the army's seizure of power. "We don't believe that we received justice," he said at his party headquarters, where loyalists were holding crisis talks.
In its verdict last Wednesday, the tribunal convicted the party of electoral fraud, claiming that it "used parliamentary elections only as a means to achieve totalitarian power".
Mr Chaturon, one of those now banned from active politics, said Thai Rak Thai loyalists remained determined to capitalise on their established brand and press ahead with the struggle to modernise and develop the country.
"We will register a new party and we intend to use the same name," he said. "We are in a most difficult situation but we believe - all of us here - that the ideology and policies of Thai Rak Thai are still accepted by the Thai people."
From his London exile, Mr Thaksin, in a hand-written note read out by his lawyer, expressed his regret at the party's dissolution and urged his loyalists to carry on their battle. Meanwhile, independent analysts expressed concern that the verdict would intensify Thailand's political polarisation and in effect disenfranchise millions of Thai Rak Thai supporters.
"The court has tried to finish the job, which was half done by the coup d'état," said Giles Ungkpakorn, a Chulalongkorn University political scientist and outspoken critic of the coup.
"It shouldn't be judges to decide whether a party is trustworthy or not; it should be the electorate to decide whether a party is trustworthy or not. Dissolving the parties is not the answer."
The forced break-up of Thai Rak Thai paves the way for a radical shake-up of Thai politics ahead of elections that the military has promised for December. The opposition Democrat party will receive what Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the director of Bangkok's Institute for Strategic and International Studies, called an "undeserved windfall". But he also warned of dangers ahead if parties were to neglect the interests of the rural poor.
"Thai Rak Thai constituents have been left out in the cold here," he said. "For the time being, [the military] is suppressing dissent, rumblings and tensions by force, intimidation and crude threats, but you can only go so far with that. If you don't address the needs and the grievances of people in the way that Thai Rak Thai did, you'll be asking for trouble."
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— FT Syndication service