I hate to say this, but I do think we are losing the plot with these elections. There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding that they have something to do with democracy, compounded by a second misunderstanding that somehow democracy is good for everyone.

In a sort of time warp incident, I was recently visited by someone who was in Thailand almost 20 years ago, but had since been following news from Thailand from the western mainstream press. In other words, he'd almost completely lost touch. He knew that we'd had a coup and bought Manchester City, but not much else.

Imagine his confusion to find that Samak Sundaravej (he of the multiple libel suits) is an odds on bet to become Prime Minister and that Banharn Silapa-archa is being touted in a king-maker role. When small men make big shadows and all that, but these are politicians whose lights went out years ago in black holes of incompetence.

Now next month everybody will dutifully go and put crosses on the most complicated ballot form that Thailand has ever devised (the Election Commission has already conceded that this fact alone is likely to cause many unintentionally invalid ballots). But this is far from being a democratic exercise.

Let us put aside for the moment the high visibility vote-buying and even the low visibility MP-buying. Let us also put aside the malign influence of the patron-client system on any equitable system of governance. (Would you dare vote against the orders of the person you're up to your neck in debt to? Because that's the situation many voters find themselves in.)

There are too many people who are not free to vote for the candidate of their choice. The military, for instance, are busy telling their people how to vote. The ‘by the left, vote right' conscripts are marched to the polls to ensure that Dusit constituency, for example, will elect the army's favourite son. (The army doesn't have favourite daughters and in times past Samak was their darling. How times have changed.)

Then there are some strangely lop-sided raids and accusations flying about. And we mustn't forget that substantial areas of the country are still under martial law. By one of those amazing coincidences, these areas correlate very closely with those that voted down the constitution at the August referendum, where ‘no' votes were interpreted as signs of pro-Thai Rak Thai (aka People Power Party) sentiment.

‘The strongest argument against democracy,' said Winston Churchill, ‘is a five minute discussion with the average voter.' It wouldn't take nearly that long with the average Thai military officer. General Sonthi, whose CNS had dragooned military personnel, government officials, local government officers and their families to vote yes at the referendum, and who had tried their best to squelch any anti-referendum voices, declared that result a ‘victory for democracy'. He's in charge of the committee to stop vote-buying in this next election. And hoping for another ‘victory', one assumes.

But even if we did have a level electoral playing field, will this exercise in democracy do us any good? If the Thaksin proxies win, the military will fear revenge and may be provoked into something silly. If they lose, we can expect even more non-democratic laws and regulations to eliminate their chances of ever taking power again.

With society as polarized as it is, democracy stops meaning ‘rule by the people' and starts meaning ‘licence for the majority to suppress the minority'.

If we accepted that everyone has the same basic rights, including the right to disagree with us, and if we had a more respectful attitude to these rights of others (even people we can't for the life us stand), then we might not be so worried.

But does Thai society have this respect for minority rights? The signs are not good. A recent survey of attitudes to the migrant labour that built the sky train and catches and processes most of our fish showed that 75% of Thais think that migrants should work as hard as Thais but should get paid less, and 60% thought they should have no right to freedom of expression. Perhaps so that they won't be able to complain about the discrimination they suffer.

Maybe this explains the general lack of outrage at decrees that migrant labourers can't drive, can't assemble, can't use mobile phones, and, if they get pregnant, can't have their babies in this country. We can only hope that when the Internal Security Act starts inflicting similar violations on the rights of Thais, there might be a bit more reaction.

No matter who you cast your vote for next month, it's unlikely to solve this kind of problem.