Polls show Thai voters sick of endless bickering over Cabinet posts
Exactly three months now since the national election for a new parliament and still no announcement of a parliamentary majority, government or ministries.
But two surveys are a strong indication of Thai voter weariness over the drawn-out process of establishing a ministerial Cabinet.
A NIDA (National Institute of Development Administration) poll shows most people (46.4%) complain that their elected representatives are focused only on securing ministerial portfolios.
More than a third of respondents (35.8%) said their MPs had not revisited their constituencies since the election.
The survey saw 1,277 people across the country, 18 years and up, quizzed on Friday and Saturday.
34% thought the MPs were playing the same old games and engaging in wars of words and invariably citing “the public interest” to justify their standpoints.
Nearly 32% say politicians in the government coalition were focused on negotiations over Cabinet portfolios, while 16.3% lamented that opposition politicians were engaging in repetitive arguments to try and topple the government.
There was a modicum of positive sentiment in the poll, with 9.2% saying their representatives often visited them and 8.7% saying most MPs were enthusiastic about working for the public interest.
Meanwhile, a Suan Dusit Poll survey out yesterday found citizens in broad agreement, with 32.8% saying the battle over Cabinet appointments was confusing, problematic and dominated by self-serving political interests.
That poll covered 1,254 people across the country between Wednesday and Saturday.
Nearly 30% of respondents said they wanted to be able to carefully check the qualifications of candidates for ministerial positions. About 24% saw nepotism at work in the Cabinet allocation process, while 15.6% complained that the process was taking too long.
Pundits believe that, with the 34th ASEAN Summit in Bangkok out of the way, the announcement of Ministries should be this week.
SOURCE: The Nation
