This weeks' disgraceful exit of the election commissioners - Vasana Puemlarp, Prinya Nakchudtree and Virachai Naewboonnien, each sentenced to four years' imprisonment for their crimes - represented the empowerment of democratic-loving people opposed to Thaksin's authoritarian leadership and corruption-prone government.

Not even a demagogue like Thaksin, who had until recently never thought twice about displaying his arrogance of power, could fail to recognise the new reality.

Suddenly, the prime minister has come to the realisation that the outcome of his desperate struggle for political survival, which will be determined at the ballot box on October 15, is no longer predictable. Thaksin's prospects for the next election have changed, because of the growing public opposition to his misrule and the simple fact that a new Election Commission (EC) can no longer be counted on to give Thai Rak Thai an unfair advantage over other political parties.

The Criminal Court's historic verdict will encourage people from all walks of life who have been subjected to manipulation, deception and harassment during Thaksin's five and a half years to rise up and reassert their rights. They can now ensure that the Kingdom's seriously flawed democracy has a decent chance to recover from the tyranny and excesses of this anti-democratic leader.

The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a coalition of political activists, civic leaders and labour unionists - now armed with fresh ammunition thanks to the guilty verdict against the commissioners - should reactivate its peaceful mass campaign to expose Thaksin's multitude of transgressions against Thai democracy and citizens.

Even as the political parties, including Thai Rak Thai, make their preparations to run in the October 15 general election, the PAD, and indeed all democracy-loving Thais, should put pressure on the relevant agencies to initiate new investigations into the convicted commissioners' assets. It needs to be determined whether the commissioners' blatant bias in favour of Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai was motivated by self-interest in the form of bribes or other financial incentives.

The guilty verdict against the three commissioners provides some clue as to how the Thaksin government was able to manipulate and then corrupt a major democratic institution like the EC for political gain. Thai society already has an inkling of how the nomination process in the Senate was rigged to favour the appointment of people friendly to the Thaksin regime to sit on key "independent" agencies like the EC.

Now is as good time as any for the relevant anti-graft agencies to look into such irregularities with a view to punishing the wrongdoers, be they takers or givers of bribes, for the possibly treasonous crime of subverting democracy. The punishment meted out to the election commissioners should serve as a reminder to corrupt politicians and their accomplices that they cannot escape the long arm of the law.

It would be a grave mistake for Thai society to accept a political truce from the Thaksin camp if it meant we should forgive the wide range of subversive actions against democracy that have been allowed to take place on Thaksin's watch.

Make no mistake, any proposal for national reconciliation that involves compromising democratic principles, sound governance and public accountability will never be acceptable. With its hard-won opportunity to restore its ailing democracy to good health, Thai society's first task should be to punish the subversive elements that undermined it in the first place. To ensure that the recovery of Thailand's democracy is sustainable, attempts to undermine it must be nipped in the bud.