Surprise "no" vote rattles Thai PM

BANGKOK, Apr 3: Opponents of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra today launched a court bid to nullify the weekend's election, saying a new layout of desks in voting stations let officials read ballot papers.

''We've come to ask for the court's help because the elections were unlawful,'' Somsak Kosaisuk of the anti-Thaksin People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) told reporters outside the Constitutional Court. There was no immediate court response.

The petition, which argued the election was unconstitutional as the secrecy of the ballot had been compromised, was just one of many problems surrounding the poll, called three years early by Thaksin to foil mass street protests against him.

Thai elections tend to be riddled with irregularities and followed by complaints, but with Thaksin using this one as a referendum on his rule in the face of an opposition boycott, such accusations could undermine his legitimacy.

After the usual allegations of mass vote-buying, the Thai-language Daily News ran a front page photograph of an election officer handing money to a female voter standing at the ballot desk. He said she was a friend off to buy cigarettes.

But the new layout of polling stations hit the rawest nerve with many of the 45 million-strong electorate, who felt the Election Commission's (EC) surprise decision to turn polling desks around was out of order.

Previously, voters were positioned with their backs to a wall, but yesterday had to do so with their backs to election officials, who they said could peer round them at the ballot paper.

An ABAC poll from Bangkok's Assumption University had 57 per cent of voters in and around the capital saying they felt polling officials could see how they voted, while 47 per cent felt the election was not ''free and fair''.

''In other circumstances it would not be a very big deal, but I would say the Election Commission was too complacent about explaining the changes to the people,'' said former commissioner Gothom Arya.

Further questions were raised about the transparency of the commission itself, which put out partial results throughout poll night in a February 2005 election but which did not release any interim tallies today after voters abstained in surprising numbers.

''Normally by this time of the day we have a clearer picture,'' Arya said.

Analysts also pointed to an unusually high number of spoilt ballots in some rural constituencies, saying it could well be people trying to register a ''no'' vote but failing to realise they had to tick the ''abstention'' box.

In 2005, disqualified votes averaged just 2.1 per cent, but Thaksin biographer Chris Baker said projections based on unofficial early results from television suggested they could be as high as 20 per cent in some seats.

''I think people who went to give a ''no'' vote just didn't do anything. They thought it meant no vote,'' Baker said.

REUTERS