New York Times report on the junta’s fake election that cheated the people of Thailand who want democracy https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/world/asia/thailand-election-results.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share … via @NYTimes
Thailand’s prime minister, Prayuth
Chan-ocha, attending the coronation procession for the country’s newly
crowned king in Bangkok on Sunday. He is expected to retain his
Thailand Election Results Signal Military’s Continued Grip on Power
Thailand’s
prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, attending the coronation procession
for the country’s newly crowned king in Bangkok on Sunday. He is
expected to retain his post.CreditAthit Perawongmetha/Reuters
By Muktita Suhartono and Austin Ramzy
BANGKOK
— Thailand’s opposition Pheu Thai Party won the most seats in the
country’s first election since a 2014 coup, but despite an alliance with
other pro-democracy parties it likely will not be able to form a
government because of rules that help the military.
No
party holds a majority of seats in the House of Representatives,
according to official results released Wednesday, meaning selecting a
prime minister could involve prolonged negotiations. But the head of the
junta and leader of the 2014 coup, Prayuth Chan-ocha, is expected to
retain his post as prime minister.
“This
is what the election was designed for,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an
associate professor of political science at the Center for Southeast
Asian Studies at Kyoto University. “The election was designed for the
prolongation of military rule.”
The
military, which wrote the 2017 constitution that created the framework
for the new government, appoints the 250-member Senate, giving it a
built-in advantage before voting even began for the 500-member House of
Representatives in March.
But
opposition parties have questioned the results, saying that rules were
changed after the vote to give an advantage to smaller parties.
The
opposition Pheu Thai Party won 136 seats in the House of
Representatives, while a pro-military party, Palang Pracharat, won 115.
Another pro-democracy party, Future Forward, took 80.
Anti-junta demonstrators holding banners depicting a caricature of the prime minister at a rally in Bangkok in March.CreditDiego Azubel/EPA, via Shutterstock
Opposition
parties said after early returns that they expected to win as many as
255 seats, but they ended up with 245, just short of a majority.
The
House and the Senate together choose the prime minister, and the
pro-military delegates are closer to the 376 needed to win that vote.
Uttama Savanayana, the leader of Palang Pracharat, said he was confident a coalition could be formed.
“We will coordinate with other parties who share our ideology and are interested in forming a government together,” he said.
The results have taken six weeks to be released, with the tabulation marred by delays and irregularities.
The allotment of 150 seats allocated by votes for particular parties —
called party-list seats — was particularly contentious. The election
commission seemed uncertain of how to apportion the votes, telling
reporters at one news conference to work it out for themselves after
releasing 208 pages of returns.
The
election commission has yet to release full results on the number of
votes cast for each party. But it confirmed that one party-list seat is
allocated to every 30,000 votes, down from the 71,000 votes it
previously said was the threshold.
The
election commission’s chief, Somchai Sawaengkan, said the previous
quota turned out to be untenable because it would have resulted in too
few party-list seats. He said Thailand’s constitutional court granted
his office the authority to distribute seats under its own calculation.
Parties
associated with Thaksin Shinawatra, who served as prime minister from
2001 to 2006, and his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, who was prime
minister from 2011 until 2014, the year the military took power, have
long been a major force in Thailand, although both have been convicted
in absentia of corruption-related offenses and live in exile.
Pheu
Thai is the latest incarnation of the party founded by Mr. Thaksin,
which has won every national election in Thailand since 2001. The new
constitution checked the power of Pheu Thai by distributing seats to a
larger number of small parties. Mr. Thaksin’s allies created new parties
but one of those, Thai Raksa Chart, was banned after it attempted to field the elder sister of the king for prime minister.
This
year another pro-democracy force emerged, the Future Forward Party,
which attracted younger voters disenchanted with established political
offerings. Last month, the authorities revived a four-year-old case against its billionaire leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who was accused of helping protesters flee arrest.
Representatives of Future Forward said it lost seven seats under the election commission’s revised system of allotment.
“The
number of votes for Future Forward Party nationwide that got thrown
into the drain is almost 600,000,” Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, the party’s
secretary-general, said Wednesday. “And when we gather the votes from
all parties that have been thrown out by the party list, the number is
at around 1,500,000 votes.”
In a report issued Thursday for Forsea,
a Southeast Asian rights group, Mr. Chachavalpongpun of Kyoto
University detailed a long list of cases of electoral fraud and
irregularities, including miscounts, government employees pressured to
support pro-military parties, accusations of vote buying and identity
theft.
The apparent changes to the party-list seats to benefit the military stands out, though, he said.
“The
extent they were able to distort regulations and also influence the
election commission to go out of its way in how to calculate, I find
that a bit disturbing,” he said.
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