Tag Archives: Party List MPs

Giles Ji Ungpakorn

There is an old saying that “voting changes nothing”. This is absolutely true in the case of Thailand, where the military junta are still in power and there is no new government, despite the fact that the junta lost the popular vote to pro-democracy parties in the March election.

One month has now elapsed since the Thai junta’s flawed elections and incredibly the final result has yet to be announced. The reason for this is that the junta-appointed electoral commission is busy trying to engineer and cover up the election fraud.

The commission is yet to release voting figures for each constituency. This is probably because there are some clear irregularities is some areas. But the real fraud is taking place with the Electoral Commission’s complex formula for calculating the number of “Party List” MPs. Seats in the 500 seat elected parliament are split between 350 constituency seats and 150 party list seats. The formula for calculating the number of Party List MPs is so complicated that even the Electoral Commission does not understand it. It has sent its formula for the junta appointed courts to approve.

56284089_2121951104556994_5136894320397254656_n — Thai Electoral Commission’s formula for calculating Party List seats

The details of the complicated formula for the number of Party List seats does not really matter. What matters is that the result can be manipulated so that Generalissimo Prayut stays as Prime Minister and that his party manages to create an overall majority to back up this fraud. So the process seems to start with writing down the number of Party List seats necessary for a junta majority, irrespective of the number of votes. The Electoral Commission can then work backwards to construct a formula which allows this to happen. This involves giving some small irrelevant anti-democratic parties some Party List seats.

Even before this outright fraud, the junta did all in its dictatorial power to make sure it was “seen” to “win” the election. This involved giving civilian parties serious handicaps in the run up to the election, dissolving Taksin’s Thai Raksa Chart Party for no legitimate reason, and stacking the Senate with military appointees.

After the election, the leader of the new Future Forward Party was then charged with sedition and told that his trial would be held in a military court. The Future Forward Party won a large number of votes on an anti-military platform. Military figures and junta toadies have also been threatening all those who oppose the military, in a return to crude Cold War tactics.

The upshot of all this is that the March 2019 elections were not in any way free or fair and Thailand cannot be said to have “returned to democracy”. The junta is intent on continuing its illegitimate and authoritarian rule by claiming to govern through an elected parliament.

The struggle for democracy and human rights must continue.

[See “Thai Politics after the 2019 Election” https://bit.ly/2UsA30a .]

Thai politics

Thai Electoral rules aimed to fragment political parties

October 14, 2018 uglytruththailand

Giles Ji Ungpakorn

The junta’s anti-reformists have devised a strange and complicated equation for allocating the number of MPs that each party would have in parliament after the next election. As in previous Thai elections, there will be MPs elected directly to various constituencies and also MPs elected from national votes for party lists. In other countries, such formulae are used to introduce proportional representation. But in Thailand the number of Party List MPs will be determined by a bizarre equation designed primarily to stop a popular party, especially “Pua Thai”, from achieving a majority in parliament. The formula means that more Party List MPs will be allocated to parties which fail to gain many Constituency MPs and those that win in many constituencies will have a reduced number of Party List seats. This would give added MPs to smaller parties such as the pro-military “Democrat Party” at the expense of a party like Taksin Shinawat’s “Pua Thai Party”.

Unlike Taksin’s parties, the Democrat Party has never won a majority in parliament and it worked hand in glove with the military after Taksin’s parties were overthrown in military and judicial coups. Taksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party won a number of general elections due to its pro-poor and modernising policies, such as universal health care and job creation and poverty reduction schemes in the countryside. The party had to change its name to “Palang Prachachon” and then “Pua Thai” after the parties were dissolved by pro-military courts. “Pua Thai” means “for Thais”.

The junta’s election formula for allocating MPs is also designed to try to make sure that Thailand goes back to having a string of weak coalition governments where different parties fight for a place at the government feeding trough. A weak elected coalition government would be easier for the military to manipulate.

However, as they say, “every force has an equal and opposite reaction”. Politicians allied to Taksin have created 2 sister parties; “Pua Tum Party” (“for justice/virtuousness”) and “Pua Chart Party” (“for the nation”). Taksin’s allies hope that this will give the pro-Taksin coalition of 3 parties an increased number of MPs compared to if they all stood in the elections under a single Pua Thai banner.

Pua Tum has also been set up in case the pro-junta courts decide to dissolve Pua Thai on some spurious grounds. Pua Thai MPs could then migrate to the party.

Pua Chart Thai has been set up by a group of former Red Shirts.

The “The Prachachart Party”, set up by former Thai Rak Thai Muslim politicians in the South, might also support a Pua Thai government.

No doubt there are many other machinations and deals, involving other politicians, going on behind the scenes.

Of course, we must also not forget that whoever wins the election will be severely constrained by the junta’s 20 year National Strategy and its appointees in the Senate and the judiciary.