PHUKET: Red versus yellow politics is coloring the future of Phuket's long-awaited conference centre project, now prevented from going ahead by a ruling that protects Phuket's unique environment instead.

Phuket's two ''yellow'' opposition Democrat MPs, Rewat Areerob and Anchalee Thepabutra, visited the proposed site north east of Mai Khao beach yesterday. Today it's the turn of Pheu Thai ''red'' party spokesman Prompong Nopparit.

Yesterday the Democrat MPs heard from locals in northern Phuket who say they want the conference centre to go ahead, despite a ruling by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment that construction would destroy Phuket's last real mangrove forest and prevent turtles nesting and hatching.

It will come as no surprise if today Khun Prompong manages to find locals who are opposed to the destruction of the mangroves for a bricks-and-mortar development not radically different to other conference centres throughout Thailand and the region.

Observers speculate that the banning of the conference centre on environmental grounds could resurrect a previous scheme to build Phuket's conference centre on an artificial island off Saphan Hin in Phuket City.

The idea was dismissed by most observers as being outrageously expensive and likely to create impenetrable trafic jams in Phuket's already crowded south.

The previous ''red'' government wanted to build the offshore conference centre, but with the budget controlled by Bangkok. The ''yellow'' solution under the Abhisit Democrat government was to use existing government land in north Phuket.

A design for the northern Phuket conference and exhibition centre was approved and the budget allocated before the ruling by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment ended the project.

The opinions of locals are not likely to carry as much weight as the opinions of the experts at the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Turning the debate into a political one is not likely to resolve it, nor does the rejection of the north Phuket site on the grounds of the environmental damage it would wreak make the already-rejected offshore island concept in Phuket's south any more attractive or less exorbitant.