THAILAND’S Constitutional Court ended the blockade of that country’s main airports by opposition party protesters on Tuesday when it banned Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat from standing for office for five years, and dissolved three of the parties of his ruling coalition after finding them guilty of vote-buying in the December 2007 elections.

The removal of Somchai, brother-in-law of the exiled former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a military coup in 2006 amid widespread public protests over corruption, ended the week-long occupation of the airports by protesters from the opposition People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). It defused the latest constitutional crisis in Thailand. The protesters allowed flights to resume at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi international airport within hours of the court decision which found Somchai’s People Power Party (PPP) and their coalition allies, Chart Thai and Matchima Thiptay, guilty of vote-buying in last year’s elections which they won.

Somchai spent less than three months in power. The campaign led by PAD started with street demonstrations and culminated in the airport blockade. PAD accused Somchai of acting as proxy for Thaksin and being hostile to the monarchy.

The removal of Somchai and the lifting of the blockade were described as nothing more than an intermission in the crisis of political instability that followed Thaksin’s overthrow. Independent observers have described the airport blockade as “mob rule.”

The PAD warned it would be back on the streets if a new government maintained links to Thaksin. It has vowed to eradicate Thaksin’s influence, accusing him of massive corruption and seeking to undermine the much-revered Thai monarchy.

Despite the dissolution of the coalition parties, their parliamentary deputies have regrouped behind a shell party in a bid to form a new government.

The decision to ban Somchai and coalition party officials from office for five years demonstrated the powers of the strengthened Constitutional Court to intervene in breaking political crises. Such intervention in politics has few parallels in the often turbulent politics of Southeast Asian political systems, not excluding the region’s restored and aspiring democracies. Independent commentators in Bangkok have described the court’s decision as a “judicial coup.”

The Thai court appears to have intervened more forcefully than the Philippine Supreme Court in breaking political deadlocks. In its most forceful form of intervention, the Supreme Court may be described to have executed a “judicial coup” when the justices, led by Chief Justice Hilario Davide, swore in then-Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president following the collapse of President Joseph Estrada’s government.

The forms of people power in the Philippines since 2001 and in Thailand since 2006, when the military staged a coup on Thaksin amid massive demonstrations, have taken different shapes. Military and judicial interventions have played pivotal roles in political change outside the legal parliamentary framework.

For the second time in three months, Thailand’s Constitutional Court removed a premier. Earlier it disqualified Prime Minister Samak Sundravej for accepting payment in his appearances on TV as a chef.

The PAD, with its middle-class constituency, is far from being a democratic movement. It favors a constitutional restriction of democracy to reduce the influence of rural voters, the power base of Thaksin.

Somchai cranked up the crisis by imposing emergency rule at Bangkok’s main airports and authorizing police to storm the areas occupied by the protesters. The impasse created tensions between the government and the military. Bangkok was rife with rumors of a military coup following reports that Somchai was about to sack the army chief for calling for the dissolution of his government.

The seizure of the airports by PAD protesters is a case of people power gone haywire and transformed into mob rule. The protesters came under heavy criticism in the Thai and international press for their occupation of the airports, with some commentators describing the events as a “rollback of democracy.” The Economist noted that a country that had once been seen as “a beacon of pluralism in a region that badly needed such a shining light” has become “a poor advertisement for democracy.”

“It has disappointed those hoping it would follow the upwards path of formerly authoritarian countries, like Spain and Brazil,” the magazine said. “Instead of evolving into a stable parliamentary democracy, it is back to being a county for coups, street fights and torn-up constitutions.”

The Bangkok Post editorially attacked the airport blockade as “wrong, unnecessary and ill-conceived,” saying that “the impact of PAD’s reckless action on the country’s tourism industry will be immense and difficult to rectify.”

The Nation newspaper warned that the group’s tactics, which seems designed to provoke the army into staging a coup, could “backfire and erode its middle-class support base.”

BBC News reported that the occupation of Thailand’s airports “is the boldest and riskiest move yet by the People’s Alliance for Democracy, after a string of similar stunts over the past four months.”

The British network added: “It has certainly done immense damage to the vital tourist industry, and even many sympathetic Thais will feel that this militant, anti-government movement has gone too far in its quest to unseat the government.”

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