After a long struggle to remain as Thailand's leader, caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has suddenly found himself more vulnerable to attack than at any time in recent months as the election scheduled for October 15 is very likely to be postponed.

Turning a deaf ear to calls to honour his pre-election promise not to take the premiership if his Thai Rak Thai Party wins the poll, Thaksin insists he will make his position known only after the election. He desperately needs the election to strengthen his position and claim legitimacy in the face of persistent efforts to oust him.

But it appears that in all likelihood the Senate won't be able to pick the new Election Commission (EC) members to fill five vacant seats until at least the weekend. The first registration day for party-list House candidates is today, but the EC won't be able to consider them until next week at the earliest.

Thus, the caretaker government under the new EC's advice will have to fix a new election day, which no one can yet predict amid the current political uncertainty.

Nothing can guarantee the new EC will get along well with the government as three unfriendly faces - as far as the Thai Rak Thai Party is concerned - are among the 10 finalists. They are Kaewsan Atibhodi, Nam Yimyaem and Wasant Sroypisut, all of whom were involved in incidents that undermined Thaksin's premiership in recent years.

Kaewsan and Nam in particular have vowed to overhaul the local ECs nation-wide before holding the election by shuffling local commissioners suspected of taking sides with political groups, which mainly support Thai Rak Thai.

If they go ahead with that plan, it could take several months to complete, and that would likely see the election postponed to early next year.

With this scenario, Thaksin could find himself in the hot seat as his opponents gain momentum in a new round of protests.

The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has vowed to stage mass rallies around the kingdom as it did earlier this year to continue its assertion that Thaksin is no longer qualified to hold the post of prime minister.

In the intervening period, meanwhile, a number of prominent figures have made a series of damning anti-Thaksin speeches which would appear to have taken great chunks out of his party's and his own credibility, especially in regard to him making a return to power after the poll.

The credit for delaying the election and raising the stakes for the opposition parties could be claimed by a group of anti-Thaksin senators. While Thaksin has been able to resist enormous pressure for his resignation, the group has managed to prolong the vetting of the EC nominees' backgrounds - although most of them welcomed the Supreme Court's selection of candidates at the beginning and said a long process of scrutiny was unnecessary.

But then they accused a group of pro-Thaksin senators of taking a bribe of Bt50 million each to ensure that the three unfriendly faces would not get EC posts. That allegation in itself was enough to create grounds for extension of the vetting of the 10 candidates.

They know that Thai Rak Thai would win at least 300 of the 500 House seats if the election were to take place today. And with the five election commissioners having been endorsed by the Supreme Court, it would be difficult not to accept the legitimacy  of that election result.

So now that the election is uncertain, it will mean Thaksin facing greater pressure from leading members of his party, many of whom want him to show where he stands. Any further procrastination on his part can only have a negative impact on the party's campaign.

With party members and swinging voters in danger of switching their support to other parties because of Thaksin's prevarication about whether he will be prime minister again, key leaders are appealing to him to put the matter to rest once and for all.

The longer the election date is deferred, the more vulnerable Thaksin becomes. Facing a genuine dilemma in his political career, Thaksin has little time left in which to decide the safest place to make a landing.

Weerayut Chokchaimadon

The Nation