Election Day Comes with Some Hiccups

It was early December and I was stopped over in Bangkok on my way back to my site after a vacation in the South to go diving and visit Khao Sok. I meet up with another Peace Corps volunteer who was also in the city at the time, and we were wandering around Khao San Road when he got a text. It said the prime minister had resigned and was calling new elections. I soon found out that the date for the elections was set for February 2. On Sunday, the voting was scheduled to be open from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m.

For the past month, there have been trucks driving around my village with the caretaker prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s face on them, along with 15, the spot that she was assigned in a random lottery draw and they blast the current favorite pop song of the whole country. Announcements are made that I don’t understand. I imagine they are are saying something along the lines of encouraging people to remember the policies that her brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, implemented that benefitted them and to continue to support the party that is under his influence.

Early voting stations in Bangkok have been blocked and shut down all last week by protestors. Registration of candidates in provinces in the south was blocked, making it so that after the election there would be no quorum on parliament. There will have to be by elections for those provinces. On Sunday many polls in Bangkok were blocked again. From other Peace Corps volunteers, it seems like those who did turn out to vote, even in rural areas, were not actually the numerous. A friend saw the tallies for her village: 259 people came out cast a ballot, with many people not voting for anyone.

I went to check out the voting station near my village to see what would be happening. After biked around everywhere, I couldn’t actually find where the voting was. I don’t think it was shut down, and going by other people’s reports, the turnout was probably so low that I just didn’t notice it was happening.

Overall, the votes probably won’t be entirely counted for the next couple of days. But with the low turnout combined with a number of polls being blockaded, there is going to be some kind of judicial or political action in the near future. One independent analyst said that the opposition may try to file a law suit seeking a declaration that the election was not fair, because not all polling stations were open. This is particularly interesting, because the opposition is the reason the polling places weren’t open, but I’m just ascribing Thai logic to this one.