Unless caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra publicly declares his intention to excuse himself from the political process in the next few weeks, violence could erupt at any time between his supporters and those who protest against him. In fact, if he decides to stick it out and wins a clear electoral victory as is expected, he may end up facing an ungovernable country with large segments of the population determined to reject him at any cost.

Plagued by mounting uncertainties, meeting the original election date of October 15 is apparently out of the question. The Senate's screening process to choose five candidates from its current list of 10 to form the National Election Commission won't be concluded anytime soon. Once the five commissioners are picked, the voting for the post of chief commissioner and subsequent royal appointments will contribute to extending the process.

Equally, if not more, complicated is the task that will fall to the new commission to name trustworthy, independent and experienced election officials at the regional, provincial and district levels - a thankless, Herculean task. Insiders might even say it's an impossible mission and also point out that, because of the intense political pressures and time constraints they face, the performance of the national election supervisory team would inevitably be flawed.

The first deadline was missed on September 5, which was supposed to be the first day of registration for candidates running in the election. A new legal complication is looming: how is the new election day to be fixed? Constitutional pundits are already locking horns over a clause that says that electoral decisions are made by the National Election Commission (NEC), jointly with the caretaker government, and as such any speculation on the postponement of the next polls would only be an academic exercise. Besides, the candidates for the NEC posts can't offer any opinion on this crucial issue at this juncture either. How would any of the 10 nominees be able to predict who will eventually be voted in by the Senate.

Thaksin's inexplicable decision to dissolve parliament in February and the subsequent NEC's bungling of the April 2 election have plunged the country into its current political black hole: a nation run by a panic-stricken, caretaker government without a House of Representatives - without a National Election Commission being picked by an outgoing Senate, with the newly-elected Senate awaiting confirmation by the incoming NEC.

Any legal or political slip-up along the way could throw a spanner in the works, delaying the vote further. Worse, as the politics of litigation has become the order of the day, any misstep could lead to dissidents seeking to nullify the election results through a prolonged judicial process.

As if things weren't convoluted enough, caretaker Interior Minister ACM Kongsak Wantana lobbed a new bomb into the political arena by instructing provincial governors to order police to take legal action against anti-Thaksin protesters making public statements against the caretaker premier. Kongsak passed along the instruction by making vague, basically irrelevant, references to the Election Act specifying how slandering one's political rivals must be avoided during election campaigns.

Thaksin's dramatic allegation - and the actions taken by police against a group of suspects - that he was the target of an assassination attempt has stoked up the political fires even further. Sceptics have been sent into a frenzy over speculation that Thaksin might exploit the crisis by tampering with the annual military reshuffle list, thus touching off another possible explosive confrontation on another front.

Unless the populace is assured of a free and fair election, Thaksin's insistence that the next election's results will put an end to all opposition against him will only stir his critics into invoking British historian John Acton (1834-1902)'s famous quote:

"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections."

For Thaksin, surviving the current self-inflicted political turmoil until election day already seems an insurmountable challenge. But more agonising for him is to discover the growing consensus that even if he manages to win big in the upcoming election, he won't be able to govern this country ever again.

He has, despite his vehement protestations, become the embodiment of that "tyranny of the majority" phenomenon. The stigma has stuck. As a local pundit put it the other day, "The next time Thaksin gives you that civic bull.... about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election."

Suthichai Yoon