Phuket Opinion: Purchasing votes to run the island

[Lite Beer]

Phuket Opinion: Purchasing votes to run the island
Phuket Gazette -

Kittipong Thiengkunakrit knows politicians buy votes, buts says that it's difficult to prove it. Photo: Saran Mitrarat

Kittipong Thiengkunakrit, 57, has been the Director of the Phuket Election Commission for three years. He has a science degree from Prince of Songkhla University, an advanced diploma from the University of Paris and a master’s degree in public administration from the National Institute of Development Administration. Mr Kittipong is a lecturer on how to run elections, election law and how to support democracy.

Here, he talks about how to bring an end to vote fraud, especially the selling of votes.

PHUKET: I know that votes are bought in Phuket; in fact, a lot of votes. And I know that the price of a vote is anywhere from 500 to 20,000 baht. Sometimes my officers even see votes being bought, but it’s very difficult to get enough evidence to make an arrest, because the buyer and seller are in collusion and neither will admit what they are doing.

Since it’s difficult to arrest the people buying votes, the best thing to do is try to stop people from selling their votes.

The most important thing for vote-sellers to realize is that they are not really coming out ahead. It might seem so because they get money for the vote, but in the long run they will pay. Nothing comes for free in this world.

Let’s say for example that Mr A wants to win an election and pays 1,000 baht to 1,000 voters to do so. For sure he’s going to want to recoup the million baht he spent.

He is likely to do this in ways that directly affect the people who sold their votes and the rest of us too. For example, if he has control of a construction project for a bridge, road or airport, he’ll cut corners or make some deal with the contractor to make money, and we will end up with an inferior product.

Phuket people need to think carefully about vote selling. Nowadays we say we want to make the island a special administration zone and elect our own governor. What’s going to happen if we allow a future governor to buy our vote? Once in office, he would be in charge of billions of baht of our tax money. Is a vote-buyer someone you can trust to handle that money well?

My office is making an effort to educate people about the hidden costs of vote selling. We don’t educate indiscriminately. Essentially, we break the population down into three groups and spend more time and effort with the groups we think we can convince. The three groups are adults who have been voting for a while, pre-voters and new voters – 18-year-olds. Which group do you think is our prime target group?

It’s the 18-year-olds, the ones who are going to vote for the first time. They are very excited and impressionable because it’s their first time, and if we can direct them in the right way, we believe we’ll help them establish a lifelong habit of doing the right thing.

The second group are people still too young to vote, those 17 and under. We can teach good habits to this group while they’re still in school. For example, we can use student elections to teach them. Ideally, this group will never be tempted by vote fraud or corruption.

The third group are adults already voting. We don’t hold out much hope of influencing this group because they already have set habits and morals – it’s hard to change these. In Thai we call these people “lotus flowers underwater”. That means they are ready for the plucking by vote-buyers.

In order to end vote buying, we have to stop vote selling. The way to do this is to get people to understand the negative impact of selling their votes and to appreciate that we each have an important role to play in making our country corruption-free.

Source: http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket_news/2013/Phuket-Opinion-Purchasing-votes-to-run-the-island-22852.html

-- Phuket Gazette 2013-11-24

[LivinginKata]

A very interesting article. This guy speaks a lot of sense. None of the usual gov official BS.

[Paangjang]

A very interesting article. This guy speaks a lot of sense. None of the usual gov official BS.

True although he's not telling us anything we didn't already know, right? Corruption in Thailand will never stop because of greed. "Money maketh many evil men"

[apetley]

A very interesting article. This guy speaks a lot of sense. None of the usual gov official BS.

My wife once worked for the local Tessaban. Her boss once gave a great speech on the evil of corruption and that she would not tolerate it in her dept.

It later turned out she was one of the biggest crooks there! At least she was caught out but her only punishment was retirement one year early.

Words are easy to say, it is action that counts and when I hear 'hard to prove' I usually see someone who really doesn't want to try that hard.

[fasteddie]

Wow! 20,000baht, they pay a lot better than the reds then.

[Paangjang]

Wow! 20,000baht, they pay a lot better than the reds then.

You mean the current PM

[KarenBravo]

A lot have Thais have told me that they take the money, then, vote for who they want.

[LivinginKata]

A lot have Thais have told me that they take the money, then, vote for who they want.

A lot of Thais have told me they take money from both sides, then don't bother voting at all.

[oldsailor35]

sounds a bit like the lady on Koh Samui who wanted a recount because she received only 14000 votes but paid for almost twice that many............... lololol Thai politics, you gotta laugh .

[NamKangMan]

A very interesting article. This guy speaks a lot of sense. None of the usual gov official BS.

My wife once worked for the local Tessaban. Her boss once gave a great speech on the evil of corruption and that she would not tolerate it in her dept.

It later turned out she was one of the biggest crooks there! At least she was caught out but her only punishment was retirement one year early.

Words are easy to say, it is action that counts and when I hear 'hard to prove' I usually see someone who really doesn't want to try that hard.

"when I hear 'hard to prove' I usually see someone who really doesn't want to try that hard." - or, someone who values their life.

[hellodolly]

A reasonable approach to the problem.

He is approaching the right groups first. Get them on board and the future will change to a more honest government. The vote buying will still go on but as each year passes more will come on that have learned the evils of vote buying and the ones who are beyond common sense will die off.

A better way bit impossible never going to happen would be to end corruption so all they would recieve was there wages. Not in this life time. Especially with the current gang in power.

[Skint]

A lot have Thais have told me that they take the money, then, vote for who they want.

 

A lot of Thais have told me they take money from both sides, then don't bother voting at all.

The Thais I know say it makes no difference who they vote for, they all give the same money.

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