As the highly-contentious April 2 election draws ever closer, clouds are beginning to form over the chances of Thaksin Shinawatra even being able to return as prime minister, let alone weather the storm that seems inevitable should he do so.

Political uncertainty over whether the election will be able to produce an outcome came out of the blue when a Thai Rak Thai party-list candidate, Premsak Phiayura, unexpectedly quit politics for the life of an ascetic, where he is now known as Phra Premasakko.

The fly-in-the-ointment here for Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai is that it had thought it would win all 100 party-list seats in the absence of the three main opposition parties. The remaining parties contesting the election - and they are all very small fry indeed - have virtually no chance of gaining the 5 per cent of the votes they need to claim their quota of party-list seats. With Premsak pulling out, that will leave Parliament one seat shy of 500, and therefore legally incapable of forming a government and electing a prime minister.

The only hope for Thaksin is that a miracle will occur and one of the smaller parties manages a "donkey vote" success. But given their performance in the previous general election [see details in box], that seems unlikely.

In the 2005 election, the party-list voter turnout was 31 million. With the system requiring a party to earn a minimum of five seats, that meant it had to win just over 1.5 million votes (5 per cent of the voter turn out).

With the competitive nature of elections being absent from this one, voter enthusiasm on April 2 could justifiably be muted, resulting in a lower turnout, but the experts do not feel that this will happen because of the system of compulsory voting. Something close to the 2005 turnout, therefore, is predicted.

So the best way to ensure a full complement of party-list MPs, which would allow the formation of a government (this is presuming all Thai Rak Thai constituency candidates achieve the minimum 20 per cent of votes in order to qualify for their seats) is for Thai Rak Thai to persuade sufficient of their supporters to vote for the minnows on April 2.

Besides the Thai Rak Thai behemoth, seven insignificant and largely unknown parties are fielding party-list candidates: Thai Farmers Party, People Power Party, Thai Citizen Party, Thai Ground Party, Thai Chuay Thai Party, Pattana Charthai Party and Dhammocratic Party.

Some political observers feel Thai Rak Thai will have to persuade its constituency candidates, especially in the Northeast, to do some campaigning for the minnows. That is, they'll ask their supporters to vote for them as constituency candidates but select a minnow candidate on the party-list ballot.

In the 2001 election, a candidate from the obscure Thin Thai Party was elected after Thai Rak Thai supporters were asked to cast their votes for him.

A Thai Rak Thai MP was disqualified after receiving a red card from the Election Commission so the party asked its supporters to vote for the Thin Thai candidate instead of an opposition candidate.

But it's not quite the same this time around. There will be a big question of credibility if somehow the Thai Citizen Party is able to draw 1.5 million votes after having gained a minuscule 38,324 votes (0.12 per cent) last year.

But should none of the minor parties achieve this miracle, then the House will have fewer than the requisite number of members. Having never faced this problem before, the Election Commission could find itself in quite a bind as to whether it can call a party-list by-election.

But should other Thai Rak Thai party-list candidates follow Premsak's lead and jump ship as well, the headache facing Thaksin could prove insurmountable.

Somroutai Sapsomboon,

Jintana Panyaarvudh

The Nation