Samak and the PPP are sitting ducks after court ruling

Okay, I did stretch it a bit. But guys with the most obscene political fantasies have pointed out to me that we are talking about the interior minister here (the equivalent of America's Michael Chertoff), who used to serve as justice minister (the Thai version of Jack Straw). 

Not to mention that Chalerm could be the only People Power Party man left standing if yesterday's Supreme Court ruling against Yongyuth Tiyapairat snowballs into a legal clampdown on the PPP. There will be other high profile candidates remaining, of course, but don't expect Chalerm to let the likes of Mingkwan Sangsuwan leapfrog him to the chief executive's chair.

Yes, it's looking really bad now for Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. For those who remember last week's column that said he was in a better position than Thaksin Shinawatra, well, he still is, if you take the tantalising possibility that jail may await the latter into consideration.

The Thai judiciary has continued its shooting spree. If its charge (the Constitution Court's endorsement of the Assets Examination Committee's legitimacy and the Supreme Court's jailing of his lawyers for contempt) a fortnight ago was directed primarily at Thaksin, this week the barrels have been trained on Samak. The Constitution Court's ruling on the Preah Vihear Temple controversy and the Supreme Court's verdict against PPP executive Yongyuth have all but doomed Samak's brief but tumultuous reign.

And - as if Samak's opponents needed any help - a bombshell, seemingly of CTX proportions, has just been dropped in Japan. A former executive of Nishimatsu Construction has told Japanese prosecutors that the firm paid Bt125 million to Thai officials in return for "favours" linked to a Bt2 billion tunnel project for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. It allegedly happened in 2003 when the BMA was supervised by, of course, then city governor Samak.

That the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) is losing ground (literally), popularity and its ability to separate friend from foe is of little comfort. Samak's trouble has shifted from the PAD's rally sites to the courts. Yesterday's ruling by the Constitution Court that the Preah Vihear joint communique with Cambodia - which was subjected to an earlier injunction by the Administrative Court - was unconstitutional, will amplify pressure for the government to show collective responsibility, or rekindle parliamentary trouble.

And then there is the Yongyuth ruling. The Constitution Court will have to rule again if it considers his guilt to be that of the PPP board as a whole, in which case Samak's party will have to be dissolved, with executives banned from politics for five years. Now you see where the Chalerm theory, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, comes from. Samak, and much of the PPP, seems trapped.

If Samak wants to 'kamikaze' his way through in the wake of the Preah Vihear ruling, that plan has been complicated by the Yongyuth verdict. In other words, he can go on TV and say "the charter doesn't say I have to resign if committing an unconstitutional act", but that means the entire ruling party, as well as two-thirds of the Cabinet, will be sitting ducks in the next few months.

What can Samak do?

He is left with a rearguard action which, worse still, has to be pulled off with precise timing. None of his options is remotely attractive. Immediate House dissolution is one of them. Surely PPP MPs won't be naive enough to stay with an endangered party, so after a House dissolution they will have about two weeks to find a new party. (If the House is dissolved, one needs to be a member of a political party for at least 30 days to be eligible to run in an election.)

The second option is to wait for the lightning strike (PPP dissolution) and oversee an exodus of unaffected PPP MPs to another party, say Chat Thai. The bad news is that all the coalition partners except Ruamjai Thai Chat Pattana and Pracharat also have legal cases pending that potentially could lead to their dissolution.

And, again, this scenario also has Chalerm as the sole high-profile survivor.

Should Samak resign now and allow a new, credible government to be formed? A lot of idealistic optimists prefer this optimistic idea, but even if Samak was drugged into giving consent to such a plan, a lot of questions will remain unanswered.

All the three options have Samak either volunteering or being forced to bow out. Those who know him well doubt he will accept any of them. Only one thing seems certain now, though: whatever his choice, his swan song will be spectacular.