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Viewing cable 06BANGKOK3481, ATTORNEY GENERAL CONSIDERS POSSIBLE DISBANDING OF

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
06BANGKOK3481 2006-06-08 11:28 2011-08-30 01:44 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Bangkok
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BANGKOK 003481 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/07/2016 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM TH TRT
SUBJECT: ATTORNEY GENERAL CONSIDERS POSSIBLE DISBANDING OF 
THAI RAK THAI 
 
Classified By: Political Counselor Susan M. Sutton, reason 1.4 (b) (d) 
 
1.  (C) SUMMARY: The Election Commission has forwarded the 
Thai Rak Thai (TRT) election fraud case to the Office of the 
Attorney General (OAG).  The EC did not include a 
recommendation, advising whether the party should be 
disbanded under the terms of the Political Parties Act, as it 
was supposed to.  The OAG will meet on June 16 to consider 
whether to return the case to the EC and require it to give a 
recommendation, or investigate the case itself and then 
forward its findings to the Constitutional Court for 
decision. Meanwhile, the draft schedule for the new round of 
elections, approved by the government but not yet by the 
King, would have the vote on October 15, with candidate 
registration ending by September 12.  Since candidates must 
be members of their party for 90 days before registering, 
time is getting short indeed for TRT members considering 
jumping ship.  If the Court decides to disband the party, we 
anticipate that efforts will be made to find an accommodation 
to permit TRT members not implicated in the electoral fraud 
to get back into the race.  The longer it takes to reach a 
decision, however, the more complicated it will be to find a 
way to do that.  End summary. 
 
FRAUD WILL OUT 
-------------- 
 
2. (SBU)  According to the deputy spokesman at the Office of 
the Attorney General (OAG), the Election Commission (EC) has 
forwarded to them a case concerning the possible disbanding 
of the ruling Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party.  The petition is 
based on the report of an EC subcommittee, which found merit 
in the accusations against TRT brought by the Democrat Party. 
 The DP alleged that TRT paid off several small parties to 
get them to run candidates in the April election, and 
assisted them in falsifying documents to qualify their 
candidates. (This enabled TRT to avoid the mandatory 20 
percent minimum vote requirement for candidates running 
unopposed.)  The EC subcommittee report had been completed on 
May 8 and details were leaked and widely reported in the 
press shortly thereafter, making it difficult for the EC to 
sit on the case any longer.  According to the leaked 
accounts, the report, prepared by a respected Supreme Court 
judge, recommended that TRT be dissolved.  It reportedly 
found that the extent of the electoral fraud and the amounts 
of money involved meant that the actions were not the 
initiative of a single party member (the evidence fingers 
Defense Minister Thammarak), but were the responsibility of 
the party itself.  The subcommission reportedly recommended 
that the party leadership, including PM Thaksin, be held 
accountable. (The law envisions banning from political office 
for up to five years as the penalty in such cases.) 
 
PASSING THE BUCK 
---------------- 
 
3. (C)  The EC has also forwarded petitions on two of the 
microparties involved in the scandal.  In the case of these 
two, the EC recommended that they be disbanded due to their 
involvement in the election fraud.  In the case of TRT, 
however, the EC (considered a bulwark of support for TRT) 
forwarded the case to the Attorney General without including 
a recommendation. 
 
4. (SBU)  The Attorney General has two choices.  It can 
return the case to the EC, and request that the EC give its 
recommendation.  The spokesman told us that this option could 
involve a joint OAG/EC committee to consider the case, or the 
EC could be required to reconsider the case itself and then 
return the case to the OAG with a recommendation.  The 
current groundswell of popular opposition to the Election 
Commissioners, who have been directly attacked by the courts 
and repeatedly pressured to resign, argues against seeking 
their opinion.  Alternatively, the OAG could decide to the 
accept the case as received, and conduct its own assessment. 
This would leave the OAG holding the bag for a potentially 
fatal attack on TRT, which may be a little much for their 
nerves.  Neither option is very attractive for the OAG; the 
deputy spokesman said that the OAG would meet on June 16 to 
consider its decision.  In either case, the OAG is tasked 
with investigating the case and forwarding the result to the 
Constitutional Court for a ruling.  The spokesman could not 
provide any useful estimate on how long this whole process 
could take. 
 
TIMING IS EVERYTHING 
-------------------- 
 
5. (C)  The issue of timing is very important for TRT 
members.  The Cabinet has approved a draft royal decree, 
which would set the election date for October 15.  Candidate 
registration for party list candidates would be September 
5-7, and for constituency candidates September 8-12, as the 
decree is currently written. Candidates must be members of 
their party for 90 days before they register, which means the 
very last deadline for switching parties. according to this 
timetable, would be early next week; it is already too late 
to qualify for the party list of a new party.  According to 
the current plan, the decree will be forwarded to the King 
for his signature in August.  (Once the decree is issued, the 
election must be held within 60 days, so it cannot be issued 
sooner). 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
6. (C)  The EC's decision to forward the TRT case to the 
Attorney General is more bad news for TRT, but we can't start 
planning the funeral yet.  It is technically possible that 
the OAG and the Court could take weeks to decide the TRT 
case, then dissolve the party, and leave TRT members with 
insufficient time to re-register with another party and 
qualify to run in October.  However, we think that this is 
not a very likely outcome.  If TRT is dissolved, we would 
anticipate there would be an effort to shift the date of 
candidate registration, if not the election date, to allow 
TRT members to get back in the game.  However, the longer the 
EC, the OAG and the Courts shuffle the case around, the 
harder it will be to accommodate all these considerations -- 
the need to have a new government soon, the need to have a 
credible process, and the need to provide an avenue for many 
of TRT's leading political figures, who are not implicated in 
the election fraud, to contest in the new elections.  End 
comment. 
 
BOYCE