Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Thai court acts to resolve position of Election Commission

The Thai Supreme Court has asked the commissioners to resign and has effectively stated that it will take control of the rerun of the election. The commissioners could in theory hang on but I find that hard to believe given that the King asked the Supreme Court to sort the mess out in the first place. The opposition has agreed to take part in the elections which will probably take place in early July given that they have to take place within 60 days and also given that one of the reasons for annulling the results of the previous elections was that they had taken place in too short a timescale so disadvantaging smaller parties.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope for a peaceful resolution to this ........ it all sounds an incredibly comlicated version of democracy.

Tony Ferguson said...

Certainly recent events have exposed certain flaws in the constitutional arrangements and I think most parties in Thailand now agree that changes will need to be made even if they do not agree as to what form those changes should take. The other intersting thing for me (as a British Republican) is the position that the King holds in Thai Society. The King is revered and does not get involved in politics normally. Indeed I think he has only intervened 3 times in 50 years but it appears that it his intervention which has broken the deadlock

SupComTabz said...

Really cool blog.. Thanks for sharing! Sometimes I get little to no international news in the US.

Tony Ferguson said...

Thanks for the comment. Much appreciated. Funnily enough my uncle lives near Chicago.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully this will put an end to the violence - I heard more people were killed/injured in a bomb yeaterday night.

Tony Ferguson said...

Sadly I think not as the bombings are mainly down to a muslim insurgency in the south of the country and pre-date all the democratic problems