Dissolving parties isn't that easy | Bangkok Post: opinion

COMMENTARY

Whoever thought that the "strong medicine" of ordering a political party dissolved if found to have committed election fraud would solve the problem of vote-buying - believed to be the root cause of all the evils in Thailand - must be either a lawyer or a madman.

The party dissolution clause and its twin action of removing the political rights of the party executives found guilty of cheating in an election, or a dozen other rules in the organic act on political parties, have only become the new norm in Thai politics for a few years, after the promulgation of the 2007 charter which prescribed a good many reasons for a party to be dissolved - apart from the usual "for being engaged in acts against democracy". The drafters of the 2007 charter must have thought that vote-buying is the root of all that has been wrong with Thai politics at that time, and they were not wrong. If politicians could buy their way into office, chances were they would use that office to recoup their investment, plus interest. Corruption ensued. Check-and-balance mechanisms were crippled. If the military took action, we had a coup. If not, we carried on in the vicious cycle of money politics. The 2007 charter's drafters, with the intimidating legacy of strongman-style Thaksin Shinawatra and his 20-million-strong power base in the Thai Rak Thai Party still fresh in their minds, must have thought the easiest, most direct way to cut down the long chain between vote-buying and corrupt politics was to strike at the "mother ship". They must have thought that a political party was just a place of gathering, a real and physical grouping of its members. If they could take that space away and erase its name, they would be able to erase it from being and the corrupt politicians would find no place to regroup.

The drafters probably extended the same logic to the banning of politicians. They must have thought if they removed the right to partake in politics from these people, they would simply disappear from the scene. And only good, honest politicians would get to stay.