A Thai coalition government backed by former premier Thaksin Shinawatra is to enter parliament next week after the Supreme Court Friday threw out lawsuits challenging the legality of Thaksin's political party, according to dpa. Legal challenges by maverick members of parliament had threatened to throw the country into turmoil by banning the People's Power Party (PPP) or annulling a December 23 election. The individual suits provoked great interest because of suspicions the moves were made with the backing of a military junta that ousted Thaksin in a September 2006 coup. Now Parliament is to open Monday and negotiations for cabinet seats in a six-party coalition dominated by the PPP will ensue. Thaksin, still in exile, is threatening to return to Thailand once the PPP, widely regarded as his proxy political party, establishes itself in power. Political analysts said the wider political mood in Bangkok appears to have swung away from a potentially divisive ejection of the PPP, which anyway faces problems of credibility and stability. The court dismissed a suit by Democrat Party renegade, Chaiwat Sinsuwong, who claimed, since the PPP was a proxy for Thaksin - who is currently banned from politics - it should be dissolved. The court ruled it had no jurisdiction on a matter that should be before the constitutional court. Chaiwat's complaints of illegal electioneering by the PPP should be put before the Election Commission, the court added. The court earlier dealt swiftly with a complaint by a New Aspiration Party spokesman, Sarawut Thongpen, that a round of advance voting voided the election as simply wrong. It said the Election Commission had organized "free and fair" elections inside the law. Great uncertainties remain. Thaksin's PPP party did not win an outright majority in December 23 elections - 233 out of 480 seats - and this number is likely to be reduced by election commission bans for voting fraud. Thai coalitions have been notoriously unstable because ideology- lite factions traditionally vie fiercely for pecuniary advantage. "There is a high-class game of power politics going on now. If the great powers want something to happen it will happen. If they don't it won't," Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a politics professor at Chulalongkorn University, said before the court gave its verdict. The powers that loath Thaksin for his ambition and his alleged corruption - the military, an older Bangkok elite and the palace - may be betting that a weakened coalition stuffed with old-style crony politicians and faced with serious economic issues to solve may struggle. The behind-the-scenes moves are impenetrable but some local newspaper pundits have been puzzled by the apparent buoyancy of the military junta who are now widely regarded as having been poor caretakers and the relative quiet of the normally ebullient Thaksin.
