Thailand election panel says blocking of ballots to hamper vote

Election results may not be certified for months because a series of by-polls will need to be held in districts where advance voting was disrupted last weekend

Suttinee Yuvejwattana

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Thailand election panel says blocking of ballots to hamper vote

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra asks anti-govt groups to respect people’s right to cast their vote, and warned that the political dispute risks tarnishing Thailand’s image. Photo: Reuters

Bangkok: Thailand’s election commission warned that voting in Sunday’s general election may be called off in parts of the country’s southern provinces because protesters are blocking the distribution of ballots.

The results of the polls may not be certified for months because a series of by-elections will need to be held in districts where advance voting was disrupted last weekend, as well as in any areas that are blockaded by demonstrators on Sunday, election commission chairman Supachai Somcharoen said.

A group of protesters has blocked the distribution of ballots in Songkhla near Thailand’s border with Malaysia, Supachai told reporters on Friday. We are still negotiating with them to try to get those ballots out. Some demonstrators also plan to block polling stations on election day.

A disputed poll will leave Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration in caretaker mode, complicating the government’s efforts to raise funds to pay rice farmers under a state subsidy program. Suthep Thaugsuban, a former opposition party powerbroker who has led a three-month street campaign to oust Yingluck, said the election will be annulled because his group blocked candidates from registering in some provinces and shut down polling stations during advance voting.

We will not block the vote, Suthep told supporters late Friday, urging them to join peaceful street demonstrations in Bangkok on election day. We are confident that the election will be annulled. Still, anyone who has blocked ballot distribution centers, please continue to do it.

Appointed council

Suthep says he speaks for a silent majority who don’t want elections until Yingluck is replaced with an appointed council that would erase what they call her family’s corrupting political influence. Yingluck says such a council would be undemocratic and an affront to the almost 16 million people who elected her in 2011.

Yingluck is deploying 10,000 police in Bangkok alone, having declared a state of emergency, as she seeks to avoid a repeat of violence that obstructed advance voting on 26 January in the south and most of the capital. Ten people have been killed and more than 500 injured since protests began 31 October.

Yingluck on Friday asked anti-government groups to respect people’s right to cast their vote, and warned that the political dispute risks tarnishing Thailand’s image.

Postponing the election will not lead to peace in the nation, Yingluck told reporters. It’s just postponing problems. Obstructing the election will make other countries see that we are not a democracy.

Protest march

Suthep has announced plans for a march across Bangkok on Sunday. The protesters are already blocking several major intersections in the city in a bid to prevent Yingluck’s government from functioning.

The election commission had called on the government to delay the poll, warning the political situation was too tense for the vote to be held peacefully. Yingluck and her advisers said it was not in their power to do so, and the government has accused the commission of trying to undermine the poll.

Suthep’s protesters prevented candidates from registering to contest at least 28 seats in the lower house, meaning that no matter what happens tomorrow, the threshold of 475 out of 500 seats for a quorum will not be met and a government can’t be formed. The election commission has said it may be three to four months before parliament will be able to open.

With no new government in place, Yingluck would remain in a caretaker role. Yingluck and her government also face a series of legal challenges to her rule, while police have issued warrants against Suthep related to the recent protests.

Amnesty bill

Yingluck called the elections on 9 December, a day after members of the opposition Democrat Party resigned from parliament en masse to join their former colleagues in the protest movement, which began in disapproval of an amnesty bill that would have let the prime minister’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, return to Thailand. Thaksin, ousted in a 2006 coup, has chosen to live overseas after fleeing a two-year jail term for corruption.

The Democrats, who draw from the same support base in Bangkok and the south as the protest movement, are boycotting the poll, saying an election wouldn’t be fair because Thaksin bought the loyalty of poor voters while in power.

The opposition has criticized the government’s program to boost rural incomes by buying rice at above-market rates, which cost taxpayers $21 billion in the past two crop years starting October 2011. The program has accumulated losses of 200 billion baht ($6.1 billion) a year, according to estimates from the World Bank.

Thaksin’s political allies, who have won the past five elections, say their popularity is based on solid policies that have improved the lives of millions, particularly people in the north and northeast. The Democrats have not won a national poll since 1992.

The Democrats previously boycotted a ballot in April 2006, when Thaksin was prime minister, on the grounds the political system needed reform. That vote was invalidated when a court found Thaksin’s party guilty of violating election laws. Thaksin was ousted before another election could be held. BLOOMBERG

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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Thailand election panel says blocking of ballots to hamper vote

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