EC party-list calculation opens a can of worms

[webfact]

EC party-list calculation opens a can of worms

By Kas Chanwanpen 
The Nation 

 

Newly elected MPs report at the new Parliament in Bangkok's Kriek Krai district on Wednesday. Nation/Korbphuk Phromrekha

 

Anti-junta camp vows to take election agency to court as MP numbers plummet

 

The Election Commission (EC) announced yesterday that 26 parties had secured party-list MP seats despite 11 of the parties not winning enough votes to be entitled to the seats and only 16 being eligible.

 

 

Yesterday’s EC announcement came with a 14-page explanation of how the controversial calculation method worked.

 

While critics and parties had suggested a formula that would allow only parties with over 71,000 votes to qualify for seats in the lower house, EC deputy secretary-general Sawang Boonmee admitted that only one formula was proposed to the commissioners – the one rejected by critics and parties.

 

Sawang refused to explain why the junta-appointed poll authority had chosen this controversial formula, saying only that it followed a stipulation in the organic law.

 

“That stipulation does not go against the Constitution,” he said. “This is the correct formula. There are no other formulas. So, we only considered this method, unless the Constitutional Court had said otherwise.”

 

The Constitutional Court ruled yesterday that the contentious stipulation in the MP election organic law did not go against the charter. 

 

Sawan, however, admitted that the number of party-list MPs could change as a Chiang Mai constituency is set to hold a re-run of an election, following the disqualification of a candidate.

 

If the total number of votes change, the seats allocated would change accordingly, he said, adding that according to the charter these changes could also be introduced a year after the election.

 

 

The EC’s decision to allocate seats to 26 parties came amid strong pressure from politicians who have constantly warned the move was unconstitutional and they may pursue legal action against the poll agency.

 

The anti-junta Pheu Thai Party, which won the highest number of seats from constituencies, is the only party without a party-list MP in the lower house. 

 

The calculation of party-list MPs became a controversial point after parties said different methods might be unconstitutional as what the charter and the organic laws say differ. 

 

However, the Constitutional Court said yesterday that the organic law only offers details of the calculation to make it possible to fill the 500-member House of Representatives and that it was not unconstitutional. 

 

Since the court did not exactly endorse any particular calculation method to allocate seats, its ruling is perceived by some as a greenlight for the EC to go ahead with using the much-debated formula that would give seats to smaller parties even though they were short of the constitutionally-required number of votes.

 

With the EC’s method, as many as 27 parties will enter Parliament, and 11 of them will have just one seat each. Some of these 11 parties did not win half of the 71,065 votes required – a figure that was obtained from the initial calculation suggested by the Constitution.

 

This also puts the anti-junta bloc at risk of failing to muster the 250 MPs it requires to legitimately set up a government. According to the EC’s announcement on Tuesday, Pheu Thai will have 136 seats, Future Forward 80, Seri Ruam Thai Party 10 party-list seats, Prachachat 7 and New Economic Party 6 seats.

 

Meanwhile, the small parties that won one seat each from the party-list tended to favour the pro-junta Phalang Pracharat to help the junta continue in power. 

 

Pheu Thai issued a statement yesterday vowing to take legal action against the EC for its calculation in favour of the pro-junta camp. The party insisted the decision was unconstitutional and hence the agency’s action should be deemed malfeasance.

 

 

Earlier, Future Forward Party secretary-general Piyabutr Saengkanokkul also took to Facebook, pressing the EC not to exploit the court verdict as a safety guard to endorse its problematic interpretation of law.

 

Future Forward Party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit urged all the non-committed parties to uphold democracy and bar the Senate from voting for the PM.

 

At a press conference yesterday, Thanathorn isolated Phalang Pracharat Party and Action Coalition Thailand Party as pro-junta parties and called on the rest to join forces and stop the attempt by the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order from retaining power.

 

 

He called on Democrat Party and Bhumjaithai, seen as determining factors in making or breaking the pro-junta camp, to keep their promise about upholding democracy.

 

“I’m ready to talk to every party,” Thanathorn said.

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2019-05-09

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[webfact]

Thai election results show no clear winner but junta party favoured

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panarat Thepgumpanat

 

FILE PHOTO: Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha speaks to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (not pictured) during their meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China, April 26, 2019. Parker Song/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

 

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Long-delayed results of Thailand's first election since a 2014 military coup released on Wednesday produced no clear winner but gave a pro-army party a clear advantage in its bid to install the current junta leader as an elected prime minister.

 

The opposition threatened legal action against Wednesday's results, saying that a new seat allocation formula robbed the "democratic front" alliance of a majority in the 500-seat House of Representatives.

 

The results are likely to set up a period of coalition building, since neither the pro-military bloc of parties nor a "democratic front" opposition alliance so far has enough votes to elect a prime minister under rules written by the junta.

 

Any government that emerges is likely to be weak, because even if the junta leader's party forms the government, it will still have to contend with the possibility of defections with allies in the lower house to pass legislation.

 

It will still be weeks before any government can be formed while a junta-selected committee finishes appointing the Senate, the 250-seat upper house of parliament that will vote together with the elected House to choose the prime minister.

 

Still, Wednesday's results made it more likely that the party of coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha will stay in power because it needs fewer allies among small and medium-sized parties to get to the 376 votes needed to elect the prime minister in the combined House and Senate vote.

 

Prayuth's Palang Pracharat party said it was confident it would lead to the formation of the next government, but didn't yet name its allies.

 

"We will coordinate with other parties who share our ideology and are interested in forming a government together," said its leader, Uttama Savanayana, a former minister under Prayuth's previous cabinets.

 

The Pheu Thai party, allied to ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, vowed to "pursue every legal means" to reverse an Election Commission formula it says favoured tiny parties at the expense of its own larger vote-getters.

 

"The Pheu Thai Party sees the Election Commission's proceedings as deliberate actions and use of power in violations of the constitution and the (electoral) law," it said in a statement.

 

The opposition had already complained the post-coup election rules were written to give advantage pro-army parties, because the appointed Senate is likely to vote along with Prayuth's party. The Election Commission and the junta deny any bias in the electoral law.

 

Palang Pracharat needs control over only about 126 seats in the House to vote in Prayuth as prime minister, under the assumption it will get most or all of junta-appointed Senate's 250 votes.

 

Palang Pracharat won 115 seats in the House, according to Wednesday's results from the Election Commission. Parties it is allied with won seven seats, bringing it to 122 votes.

 

That means Palang Pracharat needs only to gain four or more votes from the 16 unaligned parties that won 131 seats combined.

 

The "democratic front" of seven parties won a combined 245 seats in the House, falling just short of the majority in the 500-seat lower house.

 

Two seats have not yet been allocated pending re-votes ordered by the Election Commission.

 

The electoral rules make it practically impossible for the opposition to overcome the Senate's vote to form a government.

 

But it had hoped gaining a majority in the lower house would allow it to block the junta from retaining nearly unrestrained power it has wielded since the military takeover five years ago.

 

(Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Nick Macfie)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-05-09

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[Spidey]

A right stitch up! Anyone surprised?

[sjaak327]

The election itself, and the rules under which they were held opens up a can of worms. It has absolutely nothing to do with democracy.

[Reigntax]

15 minutes ago, sjaak327 said:

The election itself, and the rules under which they were held opens up a can of worms. It has absolutely nothing to do with democracy.

It is democracy. Just dictatorship style!!

[leeneeds]

A whirlpool of deceit that is so plain to see,

truth has absolutely nothing to do with this election

integrity is below absolute zero 

 

 

[perthuniversity]

what an absolute disgrace, how could it be possible for different proportions to be applied to different parties?

[Fex Bluse]

2 hours ago, webfact said:

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Long-delayed results of Thailand's first election since a 2014 military coup released on Wednesday produced no clear winner but gave a pro-army party a clear advantage in its bid to install the current junta leader as an elected prime minister.

Reuters article is far clearer, of course. For those of us who understand Thailand, this absolute cock up was the only possible outcome. 

[Oziex1]

What a mess, a predictable mess. 

[YetAnother]

2 hours ago, webfact said:

Sawang refused to explain why the junta-appointed poll authority had chosen this controversial formula,

the whole thing was bent from start to finish, have to severely moderate expectations living here

[Spidey]

10 minutes ago, YetAnother said:

the whole thing was bent from start to finish, have to severely moderate expectations living here

If you don't have any expectations you won't be disappointed. Doesn't really affect most of us on a daily basis. Feel really sorry for Thais though.

[ThomasThBKK]

49 minutes ago, Spidey said:

If you don't have any expectations you won't be disappointed. Doesn't really affect most of us on a daily basis. Feel really sorry for Thais though.

 

Will affect anyone sooner or later imo, us included even if we won't notice it for a while. 

[Spidey]

2 minutes ago, ThomasThBKK said:

 

Will affect anyone sooner or later imo, us included even if we won't notice it for a while. 

YMMV. Can't see how it could affect me any time soon.

[Eligius]

I'm sorry, I have to say this again, as quite a number of Thaivisa posters pooh-pooed my (and others') insistence a number of months back that the 'election' would be rigged. 'Oh no,' people said, 'they cannot do that. That is basically impossible in this day and age. No, they cannot fix the election result'.

 

Well, was that naive or what?! Also, how naive do the anti-junta politicians have to be STILL to believe that they will have any effective 'legal' redress? Don't they realise by now that the ruling Thai powers and adjudicators are rotten to the core?!

 

Some of us KNEW (it was not difficult to know, after all) that the militarists would ride back into town (or rather, would never leave it) as the dominant rulers of the land. Some of us were not born yesterday!

 

Edited May 9, 2019 by Eligius

[jonclark]

I want to see how the parties that join PPRP will reconcile their election policies and pledges with PPRP's

[jonclark]

2 hours ago, perthuniversity said:

what an absolute disgrace, how could it be possible for different proportions to be applied to different parties?

because the EC don't have any calculators

[rkidlad]

15 minutes ago, Eligius said:

I'm sorry, I have to say this again, as quite a number of Thaivisa posters pooh-pooed my (and others') insistence a number of months back that the 'election' would be rigged. 'Oh no,' people said, 'they cannot do that. That is basically impossible in this day and age. No, they cannot fix the election result'.

 

Well, was that naive or what?! Also, how naive do the anti-junta politicians have to be STILL to believe that they will have any effective 'legal' redress? Don't they realise by now that the ruling Thai powers and adjudicators are rotten to the core?!

 

Some of us KNEW (it was not difficult to know, after all) that the militarists would ride back into town (or rather, would never leave it) as the dominant rulers of the land. Some of us were not born yesterday!

 

One member, I’m sure you’ll know who he is, said that saying the election would be rigged is ‘tinfoil hat’ talk. 

 

He was quite vocal before. He’s certainly gone quiet on these sort of threads now. 

 

This whole election fiasco is utterly shameless. 

[Orton Rd]

Not a can of worms but the expected can of lies, manipulation and deceit. 

[Hayduke]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

EC party-list calculation opens a can of worms...

 

From day one, the Junta 'can of worms' has been based on dishonesty, corruption, falsehoods, and fraud. None of this has changed and, if anything, it’s only gotten worse. But what’s really sad, and really unfortunate… is that this is the ‘can of worms’ that Thailand deserves.

 

 

Edited May 9, 2019 by Hayduke

[holy cow cm]

It's funny that even though there was a Thai hope there would be a legitimate honest fair change -as much as they figured Thai could do, they all knew there wouldn't be as the Junta would never cower to a general public and relinquish a power they see a must as care taking for the elite and above that. Been that way for thousand or so of years. 

[Lupatria]

Was Erdogan an election consultant to the junta, or is it the other way around?

[madmitch]

On this basis perhaps we'll see 150 small parties contest the next election as they would be guaranteed a parliamentary seat. Absolutely ridiculous but we all knew that the junta would find a way to rig the election.

[mikebell]

A military can of worms stamped 'Made in Thailand.'

[PatOngo]

Two words immediately spring to mind.....Hoodwinked and Hijacked!

[chang1]

Obviously how the votes are used to select MPs should have been made public well before the election and stuck to, as it could change how people vote (protest votes etc.). 

The EC vote counters must be having a hard time working out how to set the rules to get the results they want for it to take this long to give a final tally. 

Who would have thought it would be this hard to win an election when they get to write the rules.

Democracy?

[PatOngo]

This is very interesting to watch from the bleachers, I have just secured my seat!

 

 

[peter14]

cheat again

[Xaos]

When coup? 

[gunderhill]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

14-page explanation

incredible,  surely  one  word would be enough, "cheating"

[Denim]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

Yesterday’s EC announcement came with a 14-page explanation of how the controversial calculation method worked.

 

Typo :

 

Yesterday’s EC announcement came with a 14-page explanation of how the controversial calculation method cooked the books.