Democrats cruise to Phuket victory

PHUKET CITY: On a day when over 74% of registered voters in the province made it to the polls, official results from yesteday’s general election saw Democrat Party candidates Rewat Areerob and Tossaporn Thepabutr winning both of Phuket’s two constituency MP seats by huge margins.

Also, two-time constituency MP Chalermlak Kebsup-Democrat will likely return to parliament as a party list MP, as unconfirmed results in party-list voting indicate, she will be one of eight party list MP’s from the Democrat party to represent the southern region under the new proportional representation [party list] system.

In district voting in Phuket, official results confirmed late last night by the Phuket Election Committee showed K. Rewat as the top vote-getter with 93,004, followed by running mate K. Tossaporn with 87,905 votes.

Somchart Somnam from the Chart Thai party came in a distant third with 17,252 votes.

Despite a vigorous campaign and an unprecedented support from the island’s Thai-language daily newspaper Siangtai, Palang Prachachon (“People Power”) candidates Dr Sriyada Shinawatra and Wisut Santikul were only able to garner 15,220 and 14,683 votes, respectively, to come in fourth and fifth.

In constituency voting 159,241 (74.3%) of Phuket’s 214,329 elidgeable voters exercized their right, although nearly 10% opted to tick the “No Vote” option. There were also 4,066 (2.6%) spoiled ballots.

In Phuket party list voting, the Democrats also won in a landslide with 122,038 votes. They were followed by People Power (14,376) and Puea Pandin (2,870).

Turnout for the party list voting was identical to that in the constituency voting at 74.3%, but there were fewer No Votes cast (6,035 cards or 3.8%) and more spoiled ballots (6,779 cards or 4.3%).