[Worries over polling data as election
commission refuses to declare official results]
By
Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Bangkok
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A
supporter hugs the Palang Pracharat party leader Uttama Savanayana after it
took
the
lead in Thailand’s first election since 2014. Photograph: Sakchai Lalit/AP
|
Thai politics has descended into chaos after
its first election since a 2014 coup, as two parties claimed the right to
govern, the electoral commission refused to announce the official result and
concerns were raised over irregular polling data.
Unofficial results from Sunday’s election
indicated that the pro-military Phalang Pracharat party outperformed low
expectations to win the most votes, while the pro-democracy Pheu Thai party
narrowly won the most seats.
“We have the highest vote and following the
Thai constitution, whoever has the highest vote will be the one to form
government,” said Sontirat Sontijirawong, the secretary general of Phalang
Pracharat, which was formed by the junta as a way to hold on to power through
the ballot box and secured about 7.9 million votes nationwide.
Pheu Thai, which was ousted from power in
2014 and is allied with the exiled Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, fell well
short of the landslide victory that its supporters had hoped for. Nevertheless,
its leader, Sudarat Keyuraphan, said it would try to form a government because
it won the most constituency races.
“As we have said before, the party with the
most seats is the one that has received the confidence from the people to set
up the government,” Sudarat said.
Thaksin claimed on Monday the military had
“manipulated” the results.
“I knew that the junta running Thailand
wanted to stay in power, but I cannot believe how far it has gone to manipulate
the general election on Sunday,” he wrote in an opinion piece in the New York
Times.
With no party winning an outright majority,
the scene has been set for both sides to attempt to build coalitions to form a
government.
The election was thrown into further disarray
after the election commission refused to formally declare the exact number of
parliamentary seats each party had won. The commission said it first had to
investigate numerous issues and complaints which had arisen in the voting
process. Official results are now expected on 9 May.
Several constituencies reported highly
irregular polling data, including one district, Nakhon Ratchasima, where the
numbers of ballots cast reportedly exceeded the number of registered voters by
839,564. In the Chiang Rai district in the north, the number of spoiled ballots
was almost double the number of eligible ballots.
The commission was also dealing with the case
of 1,500 overseas votes from New Zealand, which it had failed to collect from
customs in time. In a press conference, the deputy secretary general Nat
Laosisawakul appeared confused, saying the commission had consulted the
“ambassador of Helsinki” about what to do with the votes.
The system was already heavily rigged in
favour of the military. The new constitution, drawn up by the military in 2016,
gives it the power to appoint all 250 senators, who then get a vote in who
becomes prime minister. This means that the military only needed 126 votes in
the lower house to bring back the head of the junta, Prayut Chan-ocha, as prime
minister.
In the end, voter turnout was far lower than
expected at just over 65%, which is thought to have hurt the pro-democracy
parties. Pheu Thai were also hobbled by the dissolution of Thai Raksa Chart,
their sister Thaksin-allied party, which had been a key part of Pheu Thai’s
strategy to gain a majority in parliament. Thai Raksa Chart was forced to
disband by the election commission after it nominated the King’s older sister,
Princess Ubolranata, as prime minister, which was later ruled to be in
violation of the constitution.
Concerns were raised on Monday by election
observers over the “inconsistent” process of vote counting, echoing earlier
concerns by activists and opposition politicians that this election was neither
free not fair.
PNet, a group of 2,600 independent volunteer
election observers, reported multiple violations in the process of voting and
vote counting, and many of the observers were denied access to polling
stations.
The PNet spokesperson Chompunut Chalieobun
told the Guardian that it was submitting an “urgent request” to meet the
election commission to discuss its findings. “There were so many worrying
findings and we are trying to verify all of them at the moment,” said
Chompunut.
“The preparation and organisation of the
polling stations was very inconsistent, the standards varied hugely between the
stations,” she added. “And we faced a lot of challenges in this observation, a
lot of our volunteers were refused entry to the polling stations and some even
just to the polling area, and after polling closed, many were not allowed to
watch the vote counting. So there are a lot of concerns for us.”
There are likely to be weeks of backroom
negotiations before it is clear who will be forming the new government. A key
player in deciding who will be the non-partisan Bhumjaithai party, which gained
substantial votes by running on populist policies such as the legalisation of
recreational marijuana, and is now being wooed by both the pro-military and
pro-democracy factions.
If the pro-military faction does take control
of the new parliament, as most consider likely, operating under a democratic
system may be a test for Prayut and the military, who are not used to having
any political opposition while in power. Under the five years of military rule,
critics of the junta were regularly jailed or sent to “re-education camps” and
Prayut had article 44 at his disposal, a law that gave him absolute power.
There was little to no consultation, transparency or accountability under the
junta government.
