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Seems like throwing a bone to Reds in an effort to make them go home. If EC is not impartial (which it seems not to be), then surely this has to come from higher. Nothing to stop it being overturned when it gets to CC.

Reds (Veera) declaring victory on stage.

Can’t see reds falling for this one. They don’t trust CC from before. Imagine they will only leave when dissolution is agreed.

3 months to elections?

A very good tactical move by the Dem, straight out of the Thirty-six strategems: Borrow a corpse to resurrect the soul.

The government need a new pretext to crackdown again. The Dem dissolution case is a dead horse. By using a throw away and make use of it, it can provoke the UDD to protest against the EC, court(when found acquit), or Dem’s HQ. Also, this tactic provide a much need time to reinforce the soldier and bleed the steam off UDD.

well, only sensible way out of this mess.
Democrat party is dissolved, some good hearted general takes care of the government while preparing elections, somebody dies, gets a succession, reds go back to parliamentary political space were they won’t harm the establishment. win-win for everybody, except the working class which will continue getting some crumbs from the rich.

This is pure BS. Just another judicial coup. We all know
were this order has really come from and whose arse it is
meant to save. The reds are suckers if they wear this. It’s
not just the Democrats who must be dissolved.

I think they make the decision now just to watered down the red rage, so more people can feel that they can go home, so the 2nd Division can redeem their tarnish reputation and make the crack down again, this time they will make sure that they succeed.

I understand that 5 year bans only applies in cases of election fraud, not in misreporting (which was the focus of this investigation).

Taking A Step Back
The Democrats were charged with bribing smaller parties to join the boycott of the April 2006 elections in order to create a constitutional crisis through repeated rounds of uncontested by-elections. Thai Rak Thai was charged with bribing smaller parties to contest the elections. In June 2006, a panel headed by Deputy Attorney-General Chaikasem Nitisiri voted unanimously to dissolve both parties, as well as the smaller parties that received the bribes.

The findings were sent to a junta-appointed Constitutional Tribunal. This was a different body from the 1997 Constitution Constitutional Court and the current body with the same name. Three witnesses testified before the Tribunal that Democrat leaders Thaworn Senniam, Wirat Kalayasiri and Jua Ratchasi paid them to disrupt the election. The Democrat defense team claimed the witnesses were bribed to commit perjury.

In the end, the wise and infallible Tribunal acquitted the Democrat party and found the TRT party guilty.

Takeaways
– The only judgement that matters is the final judgement. The EC’s findings and vote mean nothing.
– Judgments of the wise and infallible courts have shown an unmistakable signs of judicial activism for the past five years. Our Wise and Infallible Monarch himself ordered the court solve the political crisis and “prevent the nation from collapsing.” The courts are still hard at it. I believe that dissolving the Democrat party would destabilize the high-level power structures that hold the status quo together. I really don’t think the court will sink the ship.

Whose was the single vote against dissolution? It would be the height of irony if it turned out to be Apichart, who had earlier claimed the duty to decide the case alone.

It is a delay tactic- it will then eventually be thrown out of the stacked court as having insufficient jutification; this is tactic the DP have used time and timne again to save their backsides; rest assured the EC are on the yellow/Democrat Side…Dont be fooled folks!

Now will the case be solved before or after the guy who ran over bus stop patrons in a Benz serves a day of his ten year sentence?

by Sceptic
on 04/13/2010 10:12 am

Whose was the single vote against dissolution? It would be the height of irony if it turned out to be Apichart, who had earlier claimed the duty to decide the case alone.
——–
It was from Aphichat.
Hee….hee…
It’s about building in a technical loophole as a precaution. So the Court could use to reject the case.

To echo Anonymous, will the case be solved before or after Moo Ham serves a day for using his dad’s Benz as a killing machine, or before or after any of the PAD leaders who took over Bangkok’s airports even gets sentenced at all?

It is interesting to see the various views expressed as a consequence of this news, which I personally think is rather positive(in that real democracies can only exist if the institutions of democracy are present and functioning to underpin them). It clearly proves my point that Thailand is not now, nor has it ever been, a democracy. When TRT was in power they managed to get their dirty little hands on the EC’s political party membership database in order to ‘fix’ the, I forget, was it 3 month rule.

It rather makes a mockery of the current Red shirt slogan. How does it go? ‘Give us back democracy’ or some such crass line. Give me a break. The Red leadership only wants one thing and that’s to server their political master, who, I can only hope and pray, is dying of prostate cancer. All the red plebeians are being used. It’s sad, very sad to see.

As a tax payer here, I for one will be extremely disappointed if the Reds get their way. I consider my tax baht slipping into the pockets of the coalition partners a good use of my tax money, if it enables Abhisit to create some foundation for democracy to be established at some future point in time.

Dear Anonymous-farang,
You said, “All the red plebeians are being used.”
I am not sure about that at all.
By the way, some red-shirted members might also be using Thaksin to serve their agenda as well.

@patiwat I was curious about whether the executives will get banned if the Dems get dissolved, so I did a bit of research. The law states that, in addition to cases of election fraud, the ban will also apply to mishandling of EC funds (section 82). But the court will have to have its say…

bp: 82 then 93 (dissolution) and then 97 (banning of executives for 5 years), but is if the 50 Act applies and not the 41 Act – news reports quote the EC citing both the 41 Act and the 50 Act.

If the 41 Act, you have Section 62 (mishandling of EC funds) which leads to dissolution under Section 65(5) and then banning of executives for 5 years per CDR Announcement 27 which applies by virtue of Article 309 of the Constitution

Dear No Colour Thai,

What might that agenda be if it’s not to bring back Thaksin?

If it was to, shall we say, alter the constitutional shape of Thailand, then why not just get that out in the open for discussion and open debate as suggested by Kasit yesterday or the day before?