Thai polling body under fire over reported discrepancies in early voting

Questions are being raised about Thailand Election Commission’s competency appointed under military rule after a monitoring group alleged widespread discrepancy in early voting.

Thailand will go to polls on May 14 as all eyes are on the ruling military-backed government that has been in power for nine years after it ousted an elected government in 2014.

The monitoring group—The People’s Network to Monitor Elections, an alliance of non-governmental organisations—claimed that it received about 300 complaints during Sunday’s early voting, including missing names, votes cast by the wrong people, mistakes with mailed ballots and incomplete lists of candidates at polling stations.

The poll body said it received 592 complaints, with Bangkok recording about 100. It said that investigations are underway and promised not to repeat the same mistakes on election day.

Yingcheep Atchanont, executive director of NGO iLaw, which is part of the monitoring group, said mistakes were not significant but showed a lack of understanding or training by some election personnel on the ground.

“They don’t understand the system so they only do what they understand,” Yingcheep told Reuters news agency, adding many complaints were over the same issues.

“I think in these cases they’re making honest mistakes.”

Meanwhile, an online petition demanding the ouster of the poll body soared a million, with social media replete with hashtags like “what is the point of having the EC” and another calling for the imprisonment of all the seven election commissioners. Many even questioned the commission's ability to deliver a fair and accurate result.

The commissioners were chosen in 2018 by institutions appointed by the junta after a 2014 coup by former army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha, who has been in power ever since.

This is not the first time that the poll body has come under intense scrutiny. In the last election in 2019, there were widespread allegations of manipulation and negligence, after it delayed the official result by more than a month and it changedits formulafor awarding party-list seats.

The commission at the time denied wrongdoing and said it needed time to allow recounts, disqualifications and by-elections.

Thailand is witnessing a two-way fight between the Palang Pracharat party, which is a coalition between the army and royalist establishment, against an opposition movement that has won every election in the past two decades and was removed from office three times.

Opinion polls last week showed two opposition parties withsignificant leads, according to Reuters news agency.

(With inputs from agencies)

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