Chaos threat as Thai party officials guilty of fraud

TWO senior officials with Thailand’s Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party were found guilty of election fraud yesterday in a ruling that could doom the political powerhouse founded by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thailand’s nine-member Constitutional Tribunal still has to rule on whether to dissolve the party and ban its executives from politics for five years.

The tribunal had earlier cleared TRT’s rival, the Democrat Party, of charges stemming from April 2006 polls which were annulled as fraud claims piled up.

The tribunal found the two members of TRT’s party executive, both cabinet ministers at the time, paid small parties to run in the April poll to get around a minimum vote requirement in single candidate races.

The judges also ruled that TRT had paid an official from the supposedly independent Election Commission to change party registration information.

The judgments against both parties, which some analysts warn could plunge the country into chaos, follow more than a year of upheaval, including last September’s coup that toppled Mr Thaksin.

The 61-year-old Democrat Party, Thailand’s oldest party which ruled the kingdom on and off for a decade before the TRT first swept the polls in 2001, faced charges including obstructing political campaigning and slandering the TRT.

Analysts warn that disbanding Thailand’s main parties could cause disarray, even if they simply re-establish themselves under new party names and leaders.

They say the move would wipe out a generation of veterans and discourage younger politicians from stepping into leadership roles, significantly altering the kingdom’s political landscape.