The court will have less than one week to arrive at a crucial ruling that will either make or break the controversial results, given that the repeat election held in 38 constituencies, most of which are in southern Thailand, is scheduled for April 23 and official results will not be known until at least one day afterwards.

At this stage it's certain that the roster of 100 party-list MPs, as required by the charter, will be short by one, while it's highly likely that the by-elections in the South will not yield winners in all remaining constituencies. In many of the southern constituencies Thai Rak Thai MP candidates are the sole contenders, as was the case in the April 2 election, when one-horse-race candidates got less than the minimum of 20 per cent of the votes.

Overall, the snap election called by Thaksin and boycotted by the three opposition parties will eventually yield an unsatisfactory result because the charter stipulates that the House needs to have a total of 500 MPs, 400 constituency MPs in addition to the 100 on the party list, in order to convene and choose a prime minister.

A constitutional scholar, who asked not to be named, identifies at least four major irregularities pertaining to the April 2 and April 23 elections that violate the law. First, it's not possible to open the new House if several constituencies in southern Thailand have no representatives.

Second, it's unlawful for the Election Commission (EC) to allow new candidates to stand in the April 23 by-elections since only candidates that contested (and failed to win office) in the April 2 poll would qualify.

Third, an MP candidate who was disqualified in the first election should not be able to run in the by-election, but the EC has allowed her to do so. And finally, because the minor parties that contested the April 2 poll all failed to win enough votes to qualify for a party-list seat, the quota of 100 cannot be filled.

In addition, some MP candidates were illegally permitted to switch constituencies for the April 23 repeat election after they did not prevail in their original constituencies in the April 2 poll.

Given all these legal issues, the EC has only two choices, to nullify the poll or push ahead despite the unsatisfactory results by forwarding the issue to the Constitution Court for a final ruling on whether the House can open. Several constitutional experts have suggested that it would be better for the EC, which is designed to be an independent body, to nullify the polls because there are already too many flaws, making it virtually impossible to arrive at a clean solution, but the EC so far has not appeared to be in favour of this option. As a result, it's more likely that the EC will choose the latter option and pass the buck to the court.

As for Thai Rak Thai, it appears relatively confident that the new House will be able to open on schedule despite the many significant legal issues having to do with the polls.

Tentatively the ruling party has already scheduled the dates for key events that will take place if the House is convened. On May 1 it plans to call a meeting of its MPs to select the House speaker, and on May 2 it hopes the new House will be able to convene for the first time along with the Senate to choose the president of Parliament.

On May 4 Thai Rak Thai intends to call another MP meeting to select a new prime minister, in accordance with party leader Thaksin's announcement that he will not take the post, at least for the time being.

From May 6 to 20, the nominee premier is to form his Cabinet and forward the names of members to HM the King for endorsement, and from May 31 to June 1, if this scenario is successful, the new Cabinet will present the government's policies to Parliament.

 Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

 nop1122@yahoo.com