Almost 7 million votes have already been cast in the Thai election. The political turmoil of recent years certainly seems to have enhanced electoral enthusiasm and there has been an unprecedented turnout of pre-poll voters on 14-15 December. Here is the first hand account of one of them, a resident of Chiang Mai now working in Bangkok:
I found that in Patumwan the voting place was not the third floor of the municipal building as it said on the website. I was lucky that the tuktuk took me to the school. The voting was open from 8 AM to 5 PM. I went a bit late, leaving my dorm at about 4.30, but in the end I had 15 minutes to spare.
When I got there I showed the municipal official my ID card. He asked where I came from and what my amphoe (district) was. He directed me to table 46 (because I came from Chiang Mai) to check my record.
Then I went to the second floor and two girls from the community committee gave me the two voting papers and said “after you make your choice, insert these two cards into the envelope and let the staff seal it and put it in the main box.” There was only one box in the room. I felt a bit strange because I knew that we made two choices and there should be two boxes.
After I made my vote, I put them in the envelope. A guy in a yellow shirt sealed it with his signature and visible tape. I put it in the ugly main box and left. Then I realised that the TV had said that out-of-area votes would be sent to their own districts. Before that they would be kept in a secure room with a guard, under close observation. I suppose my vote would be sent to Amphoe Muang in Chiang Mai as my village is in the same voting district as the centre of Chiang Mai. That’s way they kept the votes in the same envelope to avoid any confusion.
It was a bit tense as there were many people in military uniforms sitting about. I felt uncomfortable to take photos, especially in the voting room. There were hundreds of staff there but it was very smooth because they all ask you the same questions and direct you where you need to go. There were many police cars and official vans. Maybe it is because the police station is opposite the school. After the voting closed the cars were ready to move the boxes to the main post office for despatch.
All the party information is displayed on boards. The first official who showed me to table 46 asked me “Do you know who you will vote for?” If I didn’t know he said that there is information about candidates from every part of Thailand on the board.
I asked an official what percent of the people who had registered for a pre-poll vote came to vote. She said close to 90%, and I could see on the name list that most had been crossed out with red pen. [The Nation reports that the turn out for absentee voters was 91%.]
9 responses so far ↓
1 Srithanonchai // Dec 18, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Maybe, the high turnout was not so much about political awareness, but practicality. Many people might simply have found it too time-consuming and costly to return to their provinces for the vote, return to their current provinces for just a few days, and then travel home again for the New Year brake.
2 Andrew Walker // Dec 18, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Fair point, Sri, but there do appear to be more people pursing this pragmatic option than in the past. The issue of absentee voting is an important one given the large number of rural voters who are working in Bangkok and other urban centres. Do you think the high pre-poll absentee vote is positive sign for PPP?
A relatively accessible absentee voting system is important for the full exercise of electoral rights. I have never been quite clear about exactly what the procedures involved are in Thailand (and how severe, or strictly enforced, the penalties for non-voting are). Perhaps you could cast some light on this or perhaps there are other New Mandala readers who can help.
In Australia when you move house it is easy to enrol in a new electoral district (I have changed five or six times given various relocations for study and career). I gather that it is not so easy in Thailand (forcing people to be “absentees”). Or are there good reasons why people want to maintain their electoral registration in their home district?
3 Republican // Dec 19, 2007 at 3:48 am
With all the reports of the campaigning of the various political parties we should not overlook the fact that the most experienced politician of them all, the king, has been on a campaign trail of his own. I just read a report of his speech to two groups of judges, one civil, one military, on 17th December, carried in Thai Rath [http://www.thairath.co.th/offline.php?section=hotnews&content=72128] today.
One is never quite sure how significant these speeches are, but checking out hi-thaksin [http://www.hi-thaksin.org/home.php] I notice that it is their lead story (also, check out the strategically placed graphics that accompany the story; the hi-thaksin team know their semiology). So I think it is indeed significant.
As we know, the king’s speeches are important because they have the effect of protecting certain planned royalist political interventions with the king’s barami. That is, if a particular intervention can be seen to have received the blessing of the king in his speech before the event, criticism of the intervention by those who are disadvantaged by it would amount to lèse majesté (if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times, the only thing standing between Thailand and democracy is lèse majesté. If you abolish lèse majesté the Thai monarchy would fall within a very short time, as the full extent of its crimes, corruption and abuses of the political system became public).
The best recent example is the king’s speech to the Administrative Court judges on 24 May 2006; a week later the junta-appointed Constitutional Tribunal ruled that Thai Rak Thai was to be dissolved. Some people may remember receiving an SMS on their mobile phones (or seeing a running message at the bottom of the TV screen) from the CNS on the night of the verdict, requesting people to stay calm and abide by the king’s speech the week before.
I’m wondering if this December 17 speech is a re-run of 24 May 2006?
All the polls indicated that PPP will win the largest number of seats, and they even have a slight possibility of winning an absolute majority. Whatever the result, in a normal democracy they would be a formidable political force after 23 December. And we know that for their own survival PPP must move quickly to neutralize the forces that overthrew the TRT government on September 19. In other words if PPP take power it will be “check bin” time for the coup plotters. hi-thaksin has a nice clip which puts this in a very blunt way [http://www.hi-thaksin.org/home.php], so they’re not exactly keeping it a secret.
Of course, the royalists can not let that happen. The question is, how will they try to destroy PPP/TRT this time?
The king’s speech to the judges on 17th December may give us a hint.
Another coup would be very, very, messy, and dangerous for the royalists themselves. It would be much more difficult to avoid violence this time. If violence broke out I think it would be extremely damaging politically to the royalists. This time, as opposed to 14 October, 6 October, and May ‘92, they might not recover. It would also have very serious international ramifications. So a coup would have to be a last option.
Interestingly in a very revealing section of the speech to the military judges the king seemed to indicate that he also didn’t think a coup was a good option, and that the justice system could be used as a “weapon” just as effectively: “… ทหารถือว่ามีอาวุธ แต่ความยุติธรรมของตุลาการของท่าน ก็เท่ากับเป็นอาวุธอีกอย่าง ถ้าท่านรักษาความดีของตุลาการ ก็จะไม่ต้องใช้อาวุธที่จะประหัตประหาร… ”
So a “judicial coup”, that is, the engineering of a *political* victory for the royalists using the judiciary, instead of the military, may be a more a palatable option. As we know, since April 25 2006, the judiciary has been highly politicized. If one were not afraid of both lèse majesté and contempt of court one might question whether, after the military, the judiciary had become the king’s preferred political “weapon” of choice. The king basically said as much himself in the speech above.
One of the functions of the December 17 speech, like all his speeches to the judiciary, is to give a public demonstration of the king’s strong support for the judges.
Apart from demonstrating his support for them there was one interesting passage in the December 17th speech to the first group of judges: …มีคนที่อยากจะไปในทางที่ไม่ถูก อยากจะไปในทางที่เป็นอคติ เขาพยายามที่จะหลอกลวงตลอดเวลา ท่านต้องเข้มแข็ง ความเข้มแข็งของผู้พิพากษาจะต้อง รักษาไว้ตลอดชีวิต ทั้งเวลาธรรมดาปกติ อย่างท่านไปที่ไหน ท่านก็ละทิ้งความเป็นผู้พิพากษา ละทิ้งความเป็นคนที่มีความดี ความตรงไป ตรงมา ละทิ้งไม่ได้ อย่างเช่นการไปอยู่ในชนบท ท่านไป เห็นความไม่ดี ท่านต้องต่อสู้เพื่อให้ความไม่ดีนั้นหายไป หมดไป จะต้องให้ความดีอยู่ จงรักษาความดีไว้… (by the way, on a different topic, if anyone wants to know where the discourse of “khon di” comes from, well go no further; it is a royalist discourse. Moral of the story: don’t ever let your children grow up to be “good people” if you want to see democracy in Thailand in your lifetime).
Why mention the “countryside”/ชนบท ? Because that’s where the PPP/TRT voters are?
What the speech MIGHT signify is that following the election if certain “irregularities” were to be discovered in the conduct of the election campaign by certain parties who are out to “deceive” people (ie. PPP) it could lead to the annulment of certain election results, the banning of certain candidates, or even, in the extreme case, the dissolution of the PPP by the judiciary. And such actions would have already received the king’s approval and protection in this speech.
This is the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” network monarchy style of political intervention at which the king is a master. No paper trails, no direct orders, but the communication is clear. And the rewards will follow.
It will be interesting to see how PPP react. But as I said above, I think it is significant that it is the lead story on hi-thaksin. So we see one of the big problems in Thai politics, the problem of political communication; you are being attacked by the king, but you can not tell people directly you are being attacked because of lèse majesté.
The above is just pure speculation, of course. Others on NM may have a better interpretation. But I don’t see this speech as “business as usual”. There is a war going on.
4 Global Voices Online » Thailand: First Hand Account of Voting // Dec 19, 2007 at 6:53 am
[...] New Mandla blog has a first person account of voting in the ongoing Thai elections. Share [...]
5 jonfernquest // Dec 19, 2007 at 2:35 pm
“Or are there good reasons why people want to maintain their electoral registration in their home district?”
My understanding is that voting is connected with inclusion in jot thabian baan [house register] and this is a lot more formal than just registering to vote. If your family has lived in a village for a long time and owns a house that you also have part ownership rights in, quite real rights because in Thailand as in Burma parents often divide up the inheritance well before they pass away, why would you change your registration to an apartment you are just renting temporarily in Bangkok?
House registration systems are instruments of government control and go way way back, being associated with the institution of village headman at least in Burma, one of the few continuities between the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. In Tachileik they were actually arresting, at one time, people who were not officially included on local house registers [ein-daung-sayin]. In China until fairly recently, house lists severely restricted peoples’ mobility.
[Note: I'd like to know more about house lists in general especially wrt voting. The comments made above were just made to elicit comments by people who know all the details.]
6 Republican // Dec 19, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Further to #3, hi-thaksin appears to have been blocked.
7 Republican // Dec 19, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Further to #6 hi-thaksin is back up again.
8 Srithanonchai // Dec 20, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Andrew, Jon already pointed out that the issue is not the electoral registration but the housing register. The voter rolls are merely print-outs of the ministry of interior’s computerized house register data bases. Similarly, in Germany, you don’t enroll in electoral districts, but you change your address by de-registering at your old place (municipality) and re-registering at your new one. This automatically leads you to be located in a new constituency and a new polling area. This change-of-address procedure is a strictly enforced legal requirement. In Thailand, however, it has obviously not been possible to enforce similar requirements–for whatever reasons. Another viable method for absentee voters would be postal voting. However, there have been too many doubts about whether this would not open the door for more cheating as to make this an attractive alternative to the central polling stations for advance voting. As for whether the high turnout is an indicator of PPP’s “looming” success, I really don’t know. PS: Sorry for the “brake.”
9 Sidh S. // Dec 21, 2007 at 3:09 am
Andrew, about “…how severe, or strictly enforced, the penalties for non-voting are…”, from my personal experience, there are none. I (shamefully) admit not voting in the Thai elections (at all levels – national, Bangkok governor, Bangkok parliament) over the past 7-8 years, being in Australia (bad excuse as there is an absentee voting system which my fellow countrymen in Australia said was quite easeful to use). I have just casted my advance vote the past Sunday – my name on the housing register (in the house I haven’t lived in for 20 years) and my voting right intact.
With the issue of the rural vote being raised here, Viengrat Nethipo of Chulalongkorn recently wrote a very insightful two-part article on Bangkok Post about the impacts of the 1997 Constitution decentralization policies on rural democratization:
“The ‘networks of influence’ of local politicians”
http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/19Dec2007_news20.php
“Master of the provinces: Politics of the Northeast – a typical case study”
http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/20Dec2007_news18.php
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