Thammasat University rector Surapol Nitikraipoj yesterday likened the judicial fate of deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and former Thai Rak Thai Party executives to that of the World War II leaders who were later sentenced to death for genocide.

Surapol was voicing his opinion at a seminar organised by the Thai Journalists Association entitled "Can the rule of law take retroactive effect: a case study of the Constitution Tribunal ruling".

Surapol said he supported the judges' decision to ban 111 Thai Rak Thai Party executives from politics and impose the ruling retroactively to prevent them from causing further damage.

"The decision to have the retroactive effect is correct and the verdict is sensible. It carries no flaws because the offence has had a detrimental effect on the country and democracy," he said.

He cited the case of Nazi leaders and Japanese commanders who were subsequently sentenced to death for their war crimes, even though there were no international laws validating that punishment.

"Power struggles do not happen only during world wars but during normal states of affairs through abuses of power, such as winning elections through electoral fraud," he said.

The Constitution Tribunal banned the party executives from politics under the same principle because they had committed crimes against democracy, he added.

"Staging the coup was also bad in terms of destroying democracy through seizure of power but Thai Rak Thai is just as bad for seizing power through electoral fraud, although their crime was done more tactfully," Surapol said.

However, in order to reduce political tension after the general election, he supported the move to give amnesty to some Thai Rak Thai executives who were not involved in the offence, but not to those who committed the offence - the leaders and deputies, and the secretary-general.

Surapol said he did not believe the protests against the Council for National Security (CNS) would turn violent like the bloodshed of May 1992.

The academic said he had been approached by several political parties to join them, but he would like to publicly decline their invitations now because he felt he was not good at politics.

"I am more suited to work in a university," he said.

He said that although he was involved in drafting the interim constitution, his proposal to remove Article 17 of the draft charter - which he felt would give too much power to the coup-makers - had been turned down.

His proposal to ban the present National Legislative Assembly members, the Surayud Chulanont Cabinet and the CNS from politics for two years was also rejected.