Elections, if they happen, are unlikely to settle anything, writes Asia Sentinel’s A. Lin Neumann

On the surface, Bangkok looks much as it always does, crowded, noisy and vibrant with few signs of last year’s political turmoil that resulted in a bloody crackdown on Red Shirt protesters, arson fires in the middle of the city and worries that a decade of political tension might devolve into civil war. The economy is ticking along nicely and the tourists are back in abundance.

This would seem a good time for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to celebrate the calm, as he is expected to do today when he submits a royal decree to dissolve Parliament and call a national election for late June or early July. He recently told a group of visiting Asian newspaper editors that with the economy strong and the turmoil gone, the time has come to heal Thailand’s political wounds with “free, fair elections.”

Not so fast. Ask nearly anyone in Thailand if they expect the elections to go well and the scenarios that come back are almost universally bad.

“Things in Thailand are such a mess that it is now finally as bad as the Philippines,” said a foreign businessman who has been in Thailand for more than 40 years. “It can only end badly unless the Democrats win a majority – and even that is bad because this government is so ineffective.”

The businessman, who is close to many powerful leaders in the country, shares a common view that Abhisit owes his tenuous hold on power to the military and the royalist elite and that those factions are unlikely to allow a victory by the opposition Pheu Thai party, the latest vehicle for former premier Thaksin Shinawatra’s ambition of returning from exile on the back of the Red Shirts to reclaim the seat that was taken from him by a coup in 2006.

“If the military calls off the election because they think Thaksin will win, it will be chaos,” the man said. “If Pheu Thai win and they are denied the right to form a government, it will be chaos. If there is a shaky coalition government, it will be a mess. And Abhisit is just simply ineffective.”

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