Thai charter referendum set for 10 Jan: Election commissioner

[webfact]

Charter Referendum Set for 10 Jan: Election Commissioner
By Khaosod English


Thianchay Kiranandana, chairman of the National Reform Council (NRC), with the draft of the new constitution, 17 April 2015.

BANGKOK — The referendum on the Thai junta's new constitution will be held in January 2016, according to an election official.

"As a preliminary date, we have set it for 10 January," said Boonyakiat Rackchartcharoen, the deputy secretary of the Election Commission (EC). "We have to consider the procedure of publishing and distributing charter drafts to 19 million voters. If the distribution exceeds 80 percent, the date for the referendum will not be changed."

Thailand's 20th constitution is being drafted by a committee appointed by the military junta that seized power and dissolved the previous charter on 22 May 2014. The junta has agreed to put the charter draft to a referendum.

Boonyakiat said voters will only be able to accept or reject the constitution, which has been criticized as the least democratic charter in decades.

"If voters do not use their rights to tick the 'for' or 'against' boxes, the ballot would be voided," he said.

According to Boonyakiat, there will not be overseas or advance voting for the referendum. The voting will only take place in Thailand on a single day.

Full story: http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1435292235


-- Khaosod English 2015-06-26

[ALLSEEINGEYE]

Oh great a referendum on something that nobody will understand. This should be interesting.

[rayw]

I understood this new charter is based on giving Thailand a Proportional Representation (PR) electoral system with its normal alternative vote system similar to Germany I understood. If so this is the most democratic true basic electoral system known to the World, so why does it say the "least democratic" ?? I am baffled to say the least with that statement. Must be something or a condition in the charter that I am missing here. So can someone please enlighten me of any undemocratic factual proposals in this electoral charter that makes it far from the usual PR systems of the truest form of democracy ?

There is clearly nothing less democratic than the first past the post system (FPTP) which we basically had here before, as that allows a minority elected party to take full control of Government, which clearly is utterly wrong of course in a supposed democracy. This is quite usual in undemocratic countries like the UK where they use the flawed FPTP system resulting in most Governments over the past several decades who never actually achieved anything close to a 50% or more majority of the votes, and yet had total Government control often with an unchallengeable majority.

Take the 1980's where Thatchers UK Governments for a classic example had over 60% of the electorate who did not vote for her or her right wing Tory Government, and nor did they even want her in power strongly disagreeing with her far right policies that forced a massively increasing divide in society between the haves and have nots. Same was true of all but one of the Blair Governments too where over 50% of folk did not vote for him or is New Labour party, though in 1997 he took just over 50% of the popular vote so earned his parties control of Government but which still of course did not deserve such a landslide majority as he attained under the disgusting FPTP system. This shows how the FPTP system is extremely undemocratic in anyone's eyes who has a modicum of intelligence and/or logic, and a sense of fairness. This is also no matter whether they sit on the left or right of the fence either, as it is totally across the board WRONG !!

Sure it will need a lot of educating the Thai folk as to how PR works but it really is not rocket science just different to the democratically flawed system that they had before. Anyone other than the sadly mentally retarded can easily be shown how it works and soon it would give Governments that were fairly in sync with the percentage of support they had with the voters. What could be better than that for a truthful democracy ??

[Bannum opinions]

This is a document written by and for the anti-democrats.

Will they squelch debate before the referendum, as would be consistent with their MO?

Edited June 26, 2015 by Bannum opinions

[BigBadGeordie]

Looking at the size of the document 2 thoughts come to mind, I very much doubt many of the 19 million voters will read it; secondly the paper recyling companies are in for a good month!

[mango66]

This Charter will Thailand peoples give a chance to democracy,

but how many %age of Thai people know and will understand what is democracy ??

We in Europe which have similar German election, we know what it means, !!

Once in 5 years you can select red, blue, green, black,

and after you have to shut your mouth, or you are brandmarked as " possible agressive terorist !!

But I expect that Ts will do everything to bring this charter to fail,

SO as I hape we will have Gen Pryuth for next 10 years in power ;

at least to controll this current elite corruption and to minimise it !!

But still I don't know how he will the BIG and most corrupt RTP solve ??