At this stage, Thaksin and his wife are entitled to lodge complaints with the AEC to have a portion of their assets released if they can prove that this portion was earned legitimately. Next they will have to contest the corruption charges against them in Criminal Court. If they are found guilty of the corruption charges against them, the assets deemed to have been derived from these cases would be seized by the state.

The AEC freeze order affects all bank accounts belonging to Thaksin and his wife. Banks and other financial institutions will also be required to provide the AEC with access to banking transaction records of Thaksin and Pojaman going back to 2001, the year Thaksin became prime minister.

The move against Thaksin and his family followed several months of investigation by the AEC, which at times complained of a lack of cooperation from some government agencies, including those directly affected by alleged cases of conflict of interest and corruption scandals. Some observers believe such non-cooperation can be attributed to a fear of retribution in case Thaksin managed to make a political comeback after the next general election tentatively scheduled for later this year.

Since the Constitution Tribunal found 111 members of the Thai Rak Thai Party's executive committee, including Thaksin, guilty of electoral fraud late last month and banned them from seeking political office for five years, the chance of the deposed prime minister being returned to power is nil. The freeze on the assets of Thaksin and his wife will further diminish whatever power of patronage the former prime minister may have left. It remains to be seen if the asset freeze will have any bearing on the ongoing anti-military and anti-interim-government protests in Bangkok, which many suspect are partly financed by either Thaksin himself or his loyal friends, although some protesters seem to be genuinely opposed to what they describe as the oppressive rule of the military dictatorship.

The AEC said yesterday that the order to freeze the assets was not politically motivated. Such a statement was apparently aimed to head off any suspicion that the committee's decision was part of a conspiracy to destroy Thaksin politically. Let's hope the AEC was telling the truth and that its decision was based on a growing body of solid evidence it can use to substantiate the charges against Thaksin and his close associates, including some former senior Cabinet members.

The committee said it now has sufficient evidence to nail Thaksin for at least five alleged cases of conflict of interest and corruption. These include the procurement of rubber saplings, the purchase of bomb-detector machines at Suvarnabhumi Airport, the introduction of two- and three-digit lotteries, the granting of questionable loans to Thaksin's cronies by Krung Thai Bank without sufficient collateral, and the purchase of prime land from the Financial Institutions Development Fund under the supervision of the Bank of Thailand.

With this announcement, the AEC has raised the public's expectation that it will present strong cases against Thaksin, his family and close associates to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the accusations of corruption and conflict of interest levelled against them are backed by solid evidence and will lead to a conviction, so that the Court can order punishments to fit their crimes in order to deter other would-be corrupt officials. Failing that goal, the whole rationale of the coup - the promise to clean up politics and restore democracy - would lose all justification.