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Chaturon, speaking at a symposium on "Are Political Parties Necessary to the Thai Political System?" to mark the second anniversary of the disbanding of the TRT by the Constitution Court, did not elaborate how the elite would fall.

Instead he focused on the issue of disbanding political parties for vote-buying and said the dissolution of the TRT under the mechanism installed by the 2006 junta as well as that of three other political parties later had been wrong and illegal.

The result of the weakening of political parties as an institution is that there is less expectation by those fighting for democracy that they can rely on political parties, said Chaturon, now director of the Democratic Development Studies Institute. He noted that the anti-Thaksin Shinawatra People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), at first opposed to party politics, was now forming a political party itself, and said the public should keep a close eye on it.

Pongthep Thepkanchana said he was against vote-buying and anyone guilty of it deserved the death penalty but their party should not be dissolved.

Without political parties, he said, democracy cannot move forward and thus disbanding political parties is a loss to the country and the people in general.

Pongthep welcomed the PAD's decision to form a party as "better than creating problems outside Parliament".

Nikorn Chamnong, former TRT deputy leader, said senior MPs from several parties now dared not occupy executive posts for fear of being banned from politics as a result of the possible disbanding of their parties, which was having a corrosive effect on the party system as a whole.