There's only one way the commissioners can prove themselves worthy of their jobs: they will have to take the case head-on. But how can they do that? Already, head commissioner Vasana Puemlarp has all but discredited the fact-finding committee, led by respected former Supreme Court vice president Nam Yimyaem, by commenting that it failed to take up another aspect of the case. The Nam panel has implicated top Thai Rak Thai figures in an alleged scam to "hire" small parties to provide "fake" competition in the April 2 election, allowing Thaksin's party to get around an electoral rule requiring candidates running uncontested to get more than 20 per cent of support from all eligible voters in their respective constituencies. Vasana, who abruptly left for Australia after the findings were submitted, claimed he had not yet read the report, but the investigators were asked why they failed to probe claims that the Democrats tried to bribe certain potential witnesses to frame Thai Rak Thai or withdraw from the election.

This is a bombshell of a case, and the Thai Rak Thai Party seems to have been rattled. Prime Minister Thaksin has declined comment. As for other senior Thai Rak Thai leaders, their initial strong denials are turning into muted suggestions that the party executives implicated may have acted without the party's knowledge. The alleged offence is punishable by dissolution of the party and, according to the Constitution, Thaksin could be banned from politics for five years. That remains a far-fetched scenario, but the situation today - with the country needing a new election after the nullification of the April 2 poll and a suffocating power vacuum - was unthinkable just a few months ago.

Vasana will be confronted with the Nam panel's case when he returns from Australia, most likely tomorrow. How he will respond to it will be very interesting. The committee's report contains damning details, including bank-transaction evidence and compelling testimony from witnesses. It implicates key Thai Rak Thai figures and spells out in explicit detail how they allegedly approached the heads of the small parties and devised a scam to change official information on party membership registration in order to allow unqualified candidates to run as Thai Rak Thai's "competitors" in the April 2 election. The report details various occasions when money was paid to the parties' leaders and candidates.

How do Vasana and the other commissioners proceed from here? They have been asked, in no uncertain terms, by the Constitution, Supreme and Administrative Courts to resign in order to allow judicial intervention to provide much-needed credibility to the new election. The commissioners have balked at quitting, and instead have proposed a compromise option in which they would only "organise" the poll while allowing the courts to set up a committee that will have final say on which candidates violate the law and should be disqualified.

Supreme Court Judge Wicha Mahakhun hit the nail on the head when he suggested on Friday that the commissioners were ignoring the "clearest signals" from the three courts, which were urged by His Majesty the King to put their heads and integrity together to bring Thailand out of its present political stalemate. "This is one of the biggest tasks ever undertaken by our judiciary. The judges are trying to protect our democracy and our political system, so they won't falter as they pursue the course of action they have set themselves," said Wicha.

Vasana and Co will have to read carefully between the lines. Already, they are badly trapped here. The arrival of the Nam panel report makes sure that the more they struggle, the more they will look like, to summon a Thai saying, a monkey caught in a fishing net. If they don't respond to the damning report as they ought to, they could face charges of malfeasance. Resignation, which for several days looked like such a difficult way out, may look an easy and tempting one now.