Explainer - Numbers game: How Thailand's election system favours pro-army parties

[webfact]

Explainer - Numbers game: How Thailand's election system favours pro-army parties

 

FILE PHOTO: Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha talks with a man as he visits Lumphini Park ahead of the general election, in Bangkok, Thailand, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

 

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand goes to the polls on Sunday under a new system that critics say the military government has devised to prevent the most popular political party, which has won every election since 2001, from returning to power.

 

The military government says the new rules will usher in stability after more than a decade of fractious, at times violent, politics.

 

After a government loyal to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a 2014 coup, the military for years banned political activity, suppressed debate, restricted the media and detained dissidents.

 

Sunday's general election will officially restore civilian rule but the military will retain a decisive role in politics under a new constitution, and the former army chief who led the 2014 coup, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, is hoping to stay on as head of an elected government.

 

Following are some details about the new system that supporters of the self-exiled Thaksin say is aimed at blocking them from winning.

 

THE SENATE

The 250-seat upper house Senate is entirely appointed by the ruling junta. Under the previous constitution, the Senate was only partially appointed.

 

The Senate will for the first time since 1978 vote along with the lower house, the 500-seat House of Representatives, to choose the new prime minister and government.

 

Previously, only members of the lower house voted for prime minister.

 

The magic number of seats parties or alliances need to secure to form a government is 376 - 50 percent plus one of the total number in the two houses of parliament.

 

With the military choosing all Senate members, including seats reserved for six heads of different armed forces branches, pro-military parties would likely need to win only 126 seats in the House of Representatives to win a majority in a combined vote.

 

Anti-junta parties, on the other hand, which can't count on any Senate votes, would need to win 376 seats lower house seats to gain a majority.

 

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The makeup of the 500-seat House of Representatives is what will be decided on Sunday, but not all seats are directly elected.

 

Under the new constitution, the House of Representatives has 350 "constituency seats", to which voters on Sunday will directly elect a candidate and, by default, their preferred party.

 

It also has 150 "party seats", up from 125 previously.

 

THE FORMULA FOR PARTY SEATS

Party seats are allocated under a complicated system that big parties, like Pheu Thai, the main pro-Thaksin party, say is disadvantageous for them.

 

Party seats are distributed by a system that "caps" the total number of seats any one party can gain, based on their percentage of total votes cast nationwide.

 

The "value" one seat in the House of Representatives is assigned is based on a formula that takes the total number of votes cast and divides it by the 500 seats. So, if 40 million people were to vote on Sunday, the value of one House seat would be 80,000 votes.

 

A party cannot win more seats than it has "earned" in total votes nationwide. And if a party has already reached or is close to its cap in constituency seats, then it cannot get any more party seats than that cap allows.

 

If a party wins more constituency seats than its cap, then it keeps those seats but cannot be awarded any party seats even if it was the top vote getter.

 

The system leaves a bigger pie of party seats for smaller parties to divide up. This will likely result in numerous smaller parties that normally would not have won any seats, awarded one or more party seats.

 

To illustrate the impact of the new rules, Pheu Thai won the last election, in 2011, with 204 constituency seats and then 61 party seats - awarded under a directly proportional system - as it won 48 percent of the total vote. That gave it a majority of 265 seats in the House of Representatives.

 

If it were to win the same number of votes this time, the new rules would mean it would end up with 42 fewer seats, which would leave it short of a majority.

 

CHOOSING PRIME MINISTER

A party must have at least 25 seats in the House of Representatives to nominate a candidate for prime minister.

 

After that, it will take the support of 376 out of 750 members of the combined houses to become prime minister.

 

Because the junta will have already chosen all 250 seats of the Senate, the main Palang Pracharat party allied to the military needs to gain only 126 more votes in the lower house.

 

That's a huge advantage, though not a guarantee.

 

If no coalition can agree on prime minister, the new constitution also allows for an "outside" prime minister who is not a member of parliament.

 

(Writing by Chayut Setboonsarg and Kay Johnson; Editing by Robert Birsel)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-03-21

[PingRoundTheWorld]

"Elections".

[Ossy]

An enlightening, indeed stimulating read. Why such a read causes me to stick an extra beer in the fridge I can't understand.

[JAG]

If pro-junta parties win the required 126 seats ( quite possible as there is a couple of months after the election to "arrange things"), how is a Prime Minister with 126/500 seats behind him in the House of Representatives going to get anything done? 

 

There should be some brilliant toybox emptying moments until he calls out his friends in green...

Edited March 21, 2019 by JAG

[Misterwhisper]

Who cares which party/parties will form the next government and under what overly convoluted seat allocation system? It is only going to be there until ousted in the next coup anyway, or - just as likely - until an inevitable corruption scandal of its own making forces it to disband long before its 4-year-term is up.

 

While quite a large handful of former "banana republics" (Paraguay, anyone? Guatemala, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador; the list could go on) have successfully matured into stable democracies and shaken off the constant threat of military coups decades ago, Thailand continues dwelling in the feudal ages.

 

The majority of local politicians - and that includes the elusive "hero of the downtrodden masses", Thaksin Shinawatra - would have a hard time explaining and defining what "democracy" actually is, let alone how to achieve, sustain and protect it. It's all little more than lip service, because the only thing that counts is to get a temporary spot at the feeding trough before eventually giving it up for the next swine in the waiting line; well, at least for a while.    

Edited March 21, 2019 by Misterwhisper

[Puchaiyank]

This new government is going to slowly grind to a halt as the political divide will fester until they are unable to achieve a consensus... 

 

Then guess what happens!  

[toenail]

I would love to see the military take over my country right now ( USA). Unfortunately uneducated people support Trump’s oligarchy & white supremacy, both political parties are catering to corporate America instead of their constituents back home ( they need the lobbyists bribes for re-election, Republicans don’t have the gonads to stand against the narcissistic, orange bully, & all the two parties can do is disagree. My attitude toward a true democratic government has been tarnished- Thailand or USA

[malagateddy]

Now and again I wish that the UK Armed Forces would take over my home country..the UK
I felt the same when Blair..Brown..Straw etc where in power!@@

I would love to see the military take over my country right now ( USA). Unfortunately uneducated people support Trump’s oligarchy & white supremacy, both political parties are catering to corporate America instead of their constituents back home ( they need the lobbyists bribes for re-election, Republicans don’t have the gonads to stand against the narcissistic, orange bully, & all the two parties can do is disagree. My attitude toward a true democratic government has been tarnished- Thailand or USA

Sent from my SM-G7102 using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[Eligius]

This is all so tedious that I won't even bother to read beyond the headline.

WE ALL KNOW THE WHOLE THING IS A DONE DEAL.

WE ALL KNOW THAT THE MILITARISTS WILL 'WIN' (at the present time ...).

 

 

Edited March 21, 2019 by Eligius

[MAGA 2020]

47 minutes ago, toenail said:

I would love to see the military take over my country right now ( USA). Unfortunately uneducated people support Trump’s oligarchy & white supremacy, both political parties are catering to corporate America instead of their constituents back home ( they need the lobbyists bribes for re-election, Republicans don’t have the gonads to stand against the narcissistic, orange bully, & all the two parties can do is disagree. My attitude toward a true democratic government has been tarnished- Thailand or USA

I got a tissue for you Snowflake. 

[heybruce]

Interesting what you can learn by reading news sources from outside Thailand.  How many people knew the newly elected MP's won't have a building to meet in?  That's just a minor detail, the election is rigged in every way the generals thought possible.

 

" That the newly chosen representatives of the Thai people will be homeless stands as a symbol for how hollow the election will be, and how contemptuous the generals are of democracy, even as they claim to be restoring it. They have spent the past five years methodically rigging the system to ensure that the will of voters is thwarted, or at least fiercely circumscribed. "   https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/03/16/thailands-bogus-election

[SABloke]

When the new constitution was pushed through the referendum, I remember people arguing about the weight of the senate's vote. At the time, I was under the impression that the initial selection of the PM involved both houses thus the need for 376 votes.

 

Later on, the government's legal experts said that the senate would only be brought into the equation if a party did not manage to win a majority (more than 50%) of the lower house seats, or form a coalition with more than 50% of the seats...so only 251 needed. Now, all articles and statements only allude to the version I wrote in my first paragraph...so what happened to the other version?

 

Am I going crazy? Does anyone else remember the alternate interpretation? If so, please provide me with a link.

 

(I know it doesn't really matter because originally no members of the NCPO were allowed to stand for election, hence the "outside PM" route, which has now been totally forgotten, but I would still like to confirm that I am not, in fact, losing my mind.)

[NoshowJones]

17 hours ago, toenail said:

I would love to see the military take over my country right now ( USA). Unfortunately uneducated people support Trump’s oligarchy & white supremacy, both political parties are catering to corporate America instead of their constituents back home ( they need the lobbyists bribes for re-election, Republicans don’t have the gonads to stand against the narcissistic, orange bully, & all the two parties can do is disagree. My attitude toward a true democratic government has been tarnished- Thailand or USA

I can see where Toenail is coming from, maybe it is time the army got rid of the government in the UK as they are not representing the wish of the majority of the people.

[heybruce]

18 hours ago, toenail said:

I would love to see the military take over my country right now ( USA). Unfortunately uneducated people support Trump’s oligarchy & white supremacy, both political parties are catering to corporate America instead of their constituents back home ( they need the lobbyists bribes for re-election, Republicans don’t have the gonads to stand against the narcissistic, orange bully, & all the two parties can do is disagree. My attitude toward a true democratic government has been tarnished- Thailand or USA

I had an extended on-line argument with someone after the 2014 coup who advocated a military coup against Obama.  Now you advocate a coup against Trump.

 

As much as I loathe Trump and consider him totally unfit for any job of any importance, a military coup is not the correct solution to the problem of democracies sometimes making poor choices.  It's also not the solution to corruption in government, especially when it is used to replace a corrupt elected government with a corrupt military government.

[chainarong]

Scammers are everywhere, not only at night clubs on Rachadapisek.

 

Edited March 22, 2019 by chainarong

[CLW]

The system in place is a perfect recipe for protests and another coup to restore peace and order [emoji848].

People here are not the brightest but they are not stupid. How do you want to explain the public if a, let's say 60% coalition of anti-junta parties aren't able to install their prime minister candidate and overthrow the ruling military aka Phalang Pracharat?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[kajsmetke]

40 minutes ago, chainarong said:

Scammers are everywhere, not only at night clubs on Rachadapisek.

 

Yeeaaa tell me something about it.. 

[jayboy]

21 hours ago, toenail said:

I would love to see the military take over my country right now ( USA). Unfortunately uneducated people support Trump’s oligarchy & white supremacy, both political parties are catering to corporate America instead of their constituents back home ( they need the lobbyists bribes for re-election, Republicans don’t have the gonads to stand against the narcissistic, orange bully, & all the two parties can do is disagree. My attitude toward a true democratic government has been tarnished- Thailand or USA

Surely a contender for the most inane post of the year.

 

However, taking it at face value, why call for a military coup when you can vote the bum out?

[Dinobot]

The electoral system described here reminds me so much of science lab back in my school days.

My lab partner and I would first determine the desired outcome of the experiment, then work backward to figure out what we needed to say happened in order to make the result plausible.

[MaxLee]

On 3/21/2019 at 3:40 PM, webfact said:

Explainer - Numbers game: How Thailand's election system favours pro-army parties

Number's game, that's an easy one : Article No. 44 the Ultimate cheat code

[jayboy]

David Streckfuss is an internationally acknowledged Thai expert on society and politics.

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/thailand-march-24-vote-matter-190321081544634.html?fbclid=IwAR3lip6voRwqcKnONNkwN3dUM5cGnDhAAumD59vKZGKNteaS4V089U5ZWwM

[nong38]

It looks like a put up job and when the smoke has cleared I think that's what we will see, will the people see the same, decide they have been sold a pup and ………….?