TIME flies so fast and one year has gone. Finally, the troubled Southeast Asian nation, Thailand, managed to form a new cabinet. British patrician upbringing, Oxford-educated 44-year-old Abhisit Vejjajiva becomes the nation's third prime minister in 2008. The Cultural Revolution never happened in the region, but the country has come to a halt. The mess caused by the ochlocracy needs to be cleaned.

Last month Thai newspapers reported that the Constitutional Court (appointed by the miliary regime) dissolved Thailand's three ruling coalition parties following a finding of electoral fraud. It banned Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin's brother-in- law, and 59 executives of the three parties from politics for five years. Then, the military threatened and bribed some of the congressmen to defect to the Democrat Party. Giles Ungpakorn, a professor of politics at Chulalongkorn University put it this way: "The Democrat Party is known among the cyber community as the 'Cockroach Party'. This is because cockroaches can live in any filthy places."

These so-called Democrats have systematically backed anti-democratic measures. They supported the 2006 coup, the military constitution and the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Recently hundreds of millions of bahts of bribes were transferred among Thai politicians. The congressmen defected from one camp to another like political whores. Mr Abhisit plunged into the politics of Southeast Asia's most chaotic country after this judicial coup staged by the military. According to Dr Giles, Thai politicians of all parties, including the Democrats, are known to buy votes and become rich through corruption. Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party helped to reduce the importance of vote buying because it was the first party in decades to have real policies which were beneficial to the poor. It introduced the first universal healthcare scheme and other projects to stimulate village economies. Although the urban elite who had previously received the biggest share of state spending were alienated, in rural areas Thaksin's popularity soared.

The Democrats and the conservative elites hate the alliance between Thaksin's business party and the poor. They hate the idea that a government was using public funds to improve the lives of the poor. The PAD wants the country to abandon the system of one-person, one-vote, and instead have a mixed system in which most representatives are chosen by profession and social group. They proposed a Parliament that was 70-per cent appointed and only 30-per cent elected. The "yellow shirts" or the followers of PAD that played a key role in toppling the last government, claimed to be royalists and founded by Thai-Chinese media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul and former Bangkok mayor Chamlong Srimuang. Its title is an insult to the true meaning of democracy.

Consider this: the yellow-shirted PAD protesters agitated women, hired thugs, occupied the national TV station and the government house, beat up journalists, and blocked access to Phuket Airport. Thanks to Queen Sirikit's support and the connivance by the military and police, they closed the country's main domestic and international airports leaving more than 350,000 passengers stranded.

The blockade has crippled the country's crucial tourist industry. What the mob did was to overthrow the democratically elected government by illegal means. Former career diplomat Kasit Pirom praised the closure of the international airport as "a lot of fun with excellent food and music." He was rewarded the Foreign Minister post in the new cabinet for his support. In it’s "Open Letter to HE Ambassadors of All Countries in the Free World and Heads of UN Agencies" the group "The Silent Majority of Thai People" estimated that the economic loss caused by closing the international airport to be Bt150 billion ($6 billion). They also urged the UN and all friendly governments to investigate the involvement of the Foreign Minister in this terror act.

Basically, the problem of the Thai political crisis is a class struggle between the rural poor and their liberal allies against wealthy urban conservatives. Queen Sirikit, the military, and Bangkok's royalist and business elite are among the biggest of the PAD's behind-the-scenes backers. Queen Sirikit presided over the funeral of a PAD supporter who was killed in a police crackdown on the movement on October 7.

Some of Thaksin's' supporters in the PPP-led government and others interpreted her attendance as an indication of royal support for the protest movement. After that, can the queen still be an exemplar of her people?

Thailand's 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the single unifying figure in Thailand, swore in a new government and called on lawmakers to "ensure peace and public order" at a time of political and social turmoil. In the present crisis the world's longest-serving monarch, stayed in the royal residence in Hua Hin (a central beach resort town some 200 kilometres away from Bangkok), remained silent and made no attempts to resolve the crisis.

Thais had been looking forward to hearing from their much-loved monarch, who has long been looked to for guidance in times of turmoil. He missed his traditional speech to the nation on the eve of his 81st birthday. Finally, he made his remark and it is better late than never. However, the mob had already destroyed national assets and the economy. Will they be subjected to justice?

The Kingdom Of White Elephant, a predominantly Buddhist country, the land of smile, has become the most worrisome battlefield of class struggle. The fighting is still raging and shows no sign of being resolved anytime soon. The poor people have no media, no power and no wealth as well. That fact amounts to the exploitation of the poor by the elite and bigwigs over a long period of time.

If the rule of law principle cannot be put into effect, there will be no fair elections by democratic procedures; if the pro-Thaksin Shinawatra "red shirts" of the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship (DAAD) imitated the tactics of the PAD (staging a mass rally, laying siege to parliament) the political impasse is sure to be more chaotic. The rich will become more arrogant and extravagant; the poor will become more miserable. Who will listen to the cries from underclass? Or will they never listen?