Assoc Prof Dr Surachart Bamrungsuk of Chulalongkorn's Political Science Faculty said in a seminar marking Thailand's Constitution Day on Dec 10 at Chulalongkorn University that 2008 will probably be one of the most challenging political periods in our lifetime, maybe harsher than 1992 [‘bloody May] if the general elections on Dec 23 do not happen, or there is another coup.

In the event of another coup, according to a leaked confidential document to which the media has not paid as much attention as it did to another leaked document concerning the junta's plan to undermine the People Power Party, Thailand would resemble Burma back in August 1988 when the Burmese junta ejected the election results. If another coup occurs after the Dec 23 elections, all will be disaster.

Even if the Dec 23 poll happens as scheduled, grim prospects still loom ahead in Thai politics, he said. If the People Power Party wins the elections as predicted in many opinion surveys, will it be dissolved, or will the election results be nullified by ‘a certain process', using the excuse of all the problems expected to plague this poll? The country will see a weak democracy, a weak economy and insecurity, but will have a strong military, he said.

In the event that the elections happen and a new government is formed, then given that this election process is very much constrained, the Dec 23 general elections will not yield just a ‘semi-democracy', but a ‘manipulated' or ‘rigged' democracy.

Surachart said we are going to have a strong military and weak politics both in parliament and the civil sector which will lead to ever increasing reliance on ‘non-formal' political power with the military as the ‘political guardian'. Before the Sept 19 coup, the military leaders repeatedly insisted that there would be no coup. Now they are saying they are going back to the barracks. But as suggested in the leaked document, the military will stay on as the country's political stabilizer, he said.

And military intervention is not restricted to staging coups. The Internal Security Bill is a silent coup. No matter what critics have had to say about it, the bill has not changed. Surachart said the bill is now 80% approved and almost ready for promulgation; it might be promulgated before the elections. No one is quite sure what it would be like with the law in effect during the elections.

Politics after Dec 23 under the ‘manipulated', ‘rigged' or ‘guided' democracy will be a tense battle between militarism and liberalism. And the next government will be very vulnerable, as much as democracy itself.

Surachart urged the civil sector and academia to come to a conclusion that coups d'état would not be tolerated and problems must be solved through democratic means only.

He also predicted a severe economic downturn in 2008 due to the influence of the US economy, the strengthened Chinese currency, and the high price of oil.