Today a nine-member panel of judges in Thailand decided that Somchai Wongsawat's ruling party will be disbanded, and Somchai himself banned from politics for five years, due to ambiguous charges of electoral fraud. Also disbanded are two other parties from Somchai's six-party ruling coalition. This will mean more chaos and instability in Thai politics for the foreseeable future, with the end result probably being another general election.
The head judge of the panel that decided this stated that ''the court has decided to dissolve the party to set a political standard and an example''. This would be an acceptable statement were it not for the thousands of yellow shirted jackals quite literally at the door of the government buildings when this ruling was made. It is not setting any sort of example when a bunch of armed protesters get to decide who stays and who does not stay in power completely aside from any sort of institutionalised political process. What about the millions and millions of rural poor who didn't have the resources to mobilise, wear snazzy yellow shirts, and blockade the airport? The example that has been set is a profoundly undemocratic one, where those with the power, resources and influence to attack the state and its functions get to decide who remains in power. Make no mistake, this was a coup.
An open letter to the PAD, the bourgeois funded and elite-led organisation which took up arms to unseat the popularly elected government through extra-legal means: Fuck you.
More on this turn of events later. Maybe.
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