Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has been under intense pressure over the last two months as protesters have become increasingly aggressive in their campaign to banish her, scuttle elections and overthrow her government.
But equally challenging for her government has been resistance from inside government agencies. In addition to the Election Commission’s efforts to put off elections, the Constitutional Court recently ruled against the government in two cases, including ruling against a constitutional amendment that would have made the entire Senate directly elected. And the National Anticorruption Commission has announced that it is pursuing two large investigations against members of the governing party, Pheu Thai, that could ultimately lead to members being banned from politics or the party being dissolved.
Critics and more dispassionate analysts in Thailand have been struck by what they describe as an Election Commission reluctant to hold elections. “There seems no historical case — worldwide — of an official body in charge of holding an election that actively and aggressively opposed an election from every possible angle, at every possible moment,” said a recent commentary in The Bangkok Post, an influential English-language daily newspaper.
Government supporters say Mr. Somchai, the commissioner, sympathizes with the demonstrations, offering as evidence a photo of him on the Internet posing with two people at one of the protest sites in Bangkok. Mr. Somchai says he happened to be at a shopping mall situated in the middle of the protests and “it’s common for people to take photos with me.”
Mr. Somchai has also been criticized by some for his adversarial comments toward the government.
Last week he said that to get Ms. Yingluck, Thailand’s first female prime minister, to meet with him, he will propose a rendezvous at the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok. That was a reference to rumors — denied by Ms. Yingluck — that she met a real estate mogul there for a tryst.
Mr. Somchai says with a smile that he made the comment to “get someone’s attention.”
But the governing party did not take it as a joke. The comments about the Four Seasons are listed as evidence in impeachment proceedings started last week by the governing party against Mr. Somchai.
The attempted impeachment, which accuses Mr. Somchai of “dishonestly exercising or omitting to exercise any of his duties,” is seen largely as symbolic because the process is likely to take months, presumably after elections are held.
To his detractors, Mr. Somchai exemplifies a Bangkok-oriented mentality that discounts the wishes of people in the country’s populous northern provinces, who by most accounts are eager to cast their votes next month.