Samak could return but his troubles have just begun

The ruling clique apparently wants, as one local pundit put it, to exhume "that decomposing dead body from a rotten coffin" and parade it for a stunned and disbelieving public.

The bewildering argument from the PPP's core leadership is that the court's ruling simply disqualifies Samak on a technicality - that he was "employed" by a private firm to host a television cooking show after he became premier. But he legally remains an MP and is thus entitled to be voted back in the House as the prime minister.

That, of course, is the misguided and selfish interpretation of the court ruling by the PPP.

The court, in fact, based its verdict on one very serious violation committed by the country's chief executive: he had blatantly violated the Constitution clause that prohibits "conflict of interest" by those wielding political power.

In other words, the PPP leadership has, for no other reason except its own political survival, chosen to gloss over the all-important ethical aspect of Samak's conduct in this regard and wants to exploit a legal loophole simply to keep itself in power.

Apparently they don't give a second thought to whether this despicable display of greed for power could stoke the fire of another major crisis.

The fact is that the court ruling indicated Samak had fabricated back-dated documents to fight his case, a serious violation of the law and public trust for any political leader in any country. Apparently this didn't stop the PPP's leaders from claiming, without any semblance of shame, that their leader was still "eligible" to return as premier.

And the September 9 verdict isn't the last of Samak's legal troubles. In fact, his slide into the political abyss has only just begun.

Just around the corner is the September 25 appointment that Samak has with the Court of Appeals, when the verdict is supposed to come down on his appeal against a Criminal Court decision to jail him for two years over a defamation case.

This is arguably more ominous for Samak than the Constitution Court's ruling to disqualify him as premier on Tuesday.

If the Appeals Court rules to uphold the first verdict, Samak could immediately be put behind bars. Although he claims he could still resort to a Supreme Court ruling, most legal experts say that's not a legitimate option for Samak.

In the infamous defamation case, Samak and his close friend Dusit Siriwan were sued for libel by former deputy Bangkok governor Samart Rajpolasidhi. The first court ruling came as a shock to Samak because the two-year jail term was not accompanied, as he had expected, by a probation period.

His cantankerous, crude and abrasive manner against anyone not on his side has come back to haunt him.

The list of potentially damaging cases against Samak doesn't end there. He also faces another high-profile corruption case involving the purchase of a fleet of fire engines while he was Bangkok governor. That's being handled by the National Counter Corruption Commission, which is also investigating allegations that Samak and his Cabinet violated the Constitution by signing a joint communiqué with the Cambodian government over the listing of Preah Vihear Temple as a World Heritage Site without having obtained Parliament's endorsement.

That's not all. Samak is also the target of another NCCC probe, this one related to charges that he was implicated in the questionable construction of a garbage disposal plant - also while he held the post of Bangkok governor.

As if the list of legal cases against him isn't long enough, there is also the accusation that Samak, as prime minister, should be held legally responsible for failing to revoke the diplomatic passport of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, despite the fact that the latter jumped bail and fled to England over a major corruption case.

Now, with this string of legal time-bombs threatening Samak's future at every turn, how does one explain the PPP's preposterous, disastrous attempt to drag the whole country along on one man's dirty and messy journey to political hell?

The PPP's only excuse for committing such a blatant political crime against the country is the number of hands they have in the House.

The tyranny of the majority, it seems, has gone beyond all imaginable limits.

(For further comments, see my blog: http://blog.nationalmultimedia.com/ThaiTalk.)