Today, there are local elections in all 76 provinces (chiangwat) in Thailand.
Each province is split into amphurs (the UK equivalent would, broadly, be a county. Each amphur has several tambons, comparable to a UK municipal district, town or city. And each tambon has several moobahns, villages or parishes.
Normally, elections are held on a Sunday and the government grants that day as a holiday and forbids the sale of alcohol while the elections are in progress. But, because of some technical administrative issues, the elections are being held today, which is a Saturday. The day has not been declared a public holiday.
Some Confusion and Annoyance
Many people have voiced their concerns about this change, and have not turned out to vote. That is certainly the case in the polling station five minutes from where I live, and which I describe below.
The voters’ id cards are checked and the name crossed off the voting list to prevent any duplicate voting. The voter is given a ballot paper and directed to a polling booth. Although there is a security camera covering the booths, it would be impossible for it to capture how the voter had actually voted.
The Date Change
The reasons for the date change was that election districts had to be re-assigned. Government-enforced legal deadlines, both before and after the voting, had to be observed. That meant officials needed more time to check candidates’ qualifications, and candidates were given more time to canvass their voters. With 90,000 polling stations in the country, the administrative task is enormous.
In typical Thai style, the fact that employers were obliged to give their workers time off to vote was not made clear. To put it bluntly, no-one was told of this arrangement.
I suppose one positive feature is that there were no restrictions on alcohol sales!
My Observations on the Day
There were 9 officials working at the polling centre. Last night, the pooyaibaan, village headman, led a small team of men and women getting the hall ready for today’s activities. He rolled his sleeves up and worked alongside his colleagues. Cleaning, setting up tables and chairs, putting up election notices. Today, he was dressed in his uniform finery, lots of gold braid and ribbons.
The voting slips were placed in a large cardboard box and a girl picked out each one in turn and handed it to the pooyaibaan. He then called out the identifying number of the candidate shown on the ballot paper. The teller for that candidate entered the result on the computer and confirmed she had done so. It was a very transparent process.
This continued until the box was empty.
The candidates were allowed to sit outside the hall to watch the count taking place, And the pooyaibaan and his deputy were keeping an eye on all the activity in the hall.
I hope you enjoyed this short article and will consider commenting on it. Have you experienced elections in Thailand before? Were they different? What are your thoughts about how they differ from those in your home country?
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