New Elections

OK. For those of you who don't understand/follow the political problems going on in Thailand let me lay it out for you:

1. First, Prime Minister Thaksin made some shady business deals which made people angry, and they protested.
2. Thaksin said, "Oh yeah? Well most people still like me. I'll prove it. Let's have a vote."
3. Thaksin also added, "If I don't get X% of the vote, I'll quit."
4. The opposition parties said the vote was going to be held so soon in the future that they couldn't adequately prepare for it. Therefore, they said that they would boycott the elections.
5. The vote was held. Without any opposition parties, Thaksin's party (called "Thai Rak Thai") won "all" the votes.
6. "All" is in quotes above because a substantially large number of people voted for the "no vote" option (the same as voting "present"), while an even larger number of people didn't show up to vote at all.
7. (Of note, if a candidate wins an election, but only X% of eligible voters cast a vote for a candidate (as in not a "no vote"), that candidate has not won: Another election for that seat has to be held. That happened in a lot of places, including here in Pattaya.)
8. Thaksin did not win the X% of the vote he said he would, and therefore he resigned.
9. The second vote for all of the candidates from #7 above was held... but the election was held on the last day of Songkran (the biggest holiday day of the year), and nobody showed up to vote, meaning that many parliament seats now didn't have representatives at all... and there is some constitutional rule about parliament not having enough people within enough days after an election or something that basically causes the whole government to collapse.)
10. After the election, parliament was pretty much a 1-party government since the opposition had no candidates running in the election. However, there weren't enough elected people to convene parliament, and the whole system was getting ready to collapse.
11. The opposition won and lost: No more Thaksin, but they don't have any elected officials in government. (However, since the government looked like it was going to go poof anyway....)
12. The king stepped forward and said, "OK. This is all a mess. A government with only one party is not a democracy." He instructed the courts that it was their job to fix it. (He hinted that ruling for a new set of elections would probably be the best way to go.)
13. The courts voted 9-5 to hold new elections... with all political parties participating, presumably. (I wonder who the 5 judges were who voted against the king?)
14. Now the problem is that ex-Prime-Minister Thaksin may decide that since the whole election is going to be a do-over, he can take back his pledge to resign, which means that the whole process may begin again. (Hopefully with all the parties participating this time though.)

There you have it. #11 happened about a week ago, #12 happened today, and #13 is what everybody is trying to figure out at the moment.