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Published on December 23, 2007

 In this context, this means that whichever party wins the largest number of the 480 House seats ought to be given the right to form the next administration.

By now the majority of Thai people are ready to accept the poll results, whatever they are, as long as the election is free and fair. In fact the country has wasted precious time and resources over the past two years as sections of society have waged an anti-Thaksin war, which has unfortunately proved to be costly and moved the country nowhere.

In hindsight, mistakes were abundant. Now it's time to return to the democratic path after a one-year break in the wake of the September 19, 2006 coup. And if we all follow the principle of majority rule, the choice of a new prime minister will be quite straightforward.

Hopefully we'll have a coalition government with a combined mandate of around 300 MPs out of the 480-member House.

That figure will give the next administration a comfortable enough margin to be stable for

one or two years or maybe even longer.

When Thailand has a stable government, its political system will also become more stable, a prerequisite for a higher economic growth rate when Thailand is lagging among East and Southeast Asian countries.

Even neighbouring Cambodia's economy has been growing faster than Thailand's over the past couple of years at 10 per cent versus 4 per cent of GDP.

However, the politics of Thai coalition governments will remain unchanged from the older days as there will be intense negotiations and lobbying for a decent quota of Cabinet seats by coalition partners who will undoubtedly hope to recoup their investment by joining the incoming government.

Many faces in the new Cabinet will be familiar, having been in the political arena for years or even for a couple of decades. Their styles will not be unprecedented, but they and their party bosses will know how to share benefits among themselves peacefully at least for a while.

Their politics will be quite different from that of a single-party government as witnessed during the Thaksin years from 2001 to 2006; for the current 2007 Charter is not designed to promote strong government. As a result, politics will be less decisive and so will the new

prime minister as he will wield less power.

Still, the political outlook should be better than that of the past year under an interim administration installed by the Council for National Security, which staged the 2006 coup.

In the end, the majority of people, not just a few, should have the final say as to what kind of government they elect to office. Only in that way can the rural poor, who form the majority of voters, learn the nuts and bolts of democracy, however ill-informed they may have been.

Kanin Boonsuwan, who helped draft the previous 1997 charter, told me there was no shortcut to a solid democratic regime, so the education of the majority was very important.

In this respect the September 19, 2006 coup simply cut short the learning process for the rural poor, who were unfairly criticised for failing to comprehend the risks of populist policies during the Thaksin years.

In a democracy, if the majority is happy all is well, and the minority should not attempt to override majority rule until the next polls come around. In other words, the system should always be allowed to run its full course.

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

 nop1122@yahoo.com