Six pro-democracy parties, led by Pheu Thai, are announcing their intention to form a coalition government this morning.

The number-crunchers say, even without the support of BumJaiThai and the Democrats, they have 252 house seats to form a majority government (they need at least 251 seats in the 500 seat parliament).

The parties siding with Pheu Thai to form the next Thai government are Future Forward (87 seats), Thai Liberal or Seri Ruamthai (11), Prachachat (6), New Economics (6) and Puea Chat (5).

The parties will meet to make the announcement at the Lancaster Hotel in Bangkok at 10am.

During the recent few days of horse-trading, Pheu Thai secretary-general Phumtham Wechayachai said they were willing to entertain Anutin Charnvirakul, leader of the Bhumjaithai, as PM of a coalition government in exchange for his party’s support.

The support from BumJaiThai would legitimise any new government with an increased majority, but would still fall short of the 376 seats needed to choose the next PM (a decision made by both houses of parliament, including the Junta-selected 250 Senators).

On Monday, Future Forward leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit laid down three conditions for joining a coalition – to rewrite the constitution, eliminate the legacy of military coups and push for military reforms to help prevent more coups in the future.

by Pratch Rujivanarom

Facing a major public outcry over suspicious election processes and problematic vote counting, the Election Commission has been warned by both international and local election observers to promptly resolve all public doubts and prevent the escalation of political problems and conflicts.

During the release of an interim report by Asian Network for Free Election (ANFREL) in Bangkok yesterday, the network’s official Amael Vier said the election did not meet international standards in terms of fairness and trustworthiness.

He said that though ANFREL observers say the balloting had gone quite smoothly, they still detected many fundamental shortcomings, which could destroy people’s trust and eventually invalidate this election’s results.

The observers monitored the election at 492 polling stations across 30 provinces from the start of the voting until the votes were being counted.

He said some of the serious flaws included overly restrictive regulations regarding the validity of ballot marks, poor education among the public which contributed to the unusually high 2.8 million invalid ballots, lack of participation of relevant stakeholders and unfair rules that heavily tilted the tally to benefit pro-junta parties.

Chiewpirun Chaoon, coordinator of We Watch Network, a group of local observers, said his network has received more than 2,000 reports of electoral fraud and other issues from volunteer election observers nationwide.

“Our 4,000 volunteers nationwide witnessed many cases of suspicious conduct and procedures by EC and local officials,” Chiewpirun said.

“Volunteers were not even allowed into some polling stations to monitor the process, which is a clear obstruction in making the poll transparent.”

Due to these problems, ANFREL’s Vier suggested that the EC immediately address these flaws and clear every suspicion by making the election process transparent and announcing the official results as soon as possible.

“The lack of transparency and cooperation between the EC and other electoral stakeholders has severely limited the outflow of information, thereby fuelling distrust in the process and the institution itself,” Vier said.

“The EC could have improved the quality of the process by doing more to disseminate information on the polling procedures, which could have alleviated much of the public’s doubts regarding the process.”

Meanwhile, Maja Kocijancic, spokesperson for the European Union’s foreign affairs and security policy, congratulated Thailand for successfully holding a first fully-contested election since 2011, but also urged the authorities to announce the election result as quickly as possible.

SOURCE: The Nation