PM abuse rampant on spoiled ballots
A ballot slip marked ‘no vote’ with a remark written in Thai that rudely urges Premier Thaksin to step down, found at a polling station in the southern province of Pattani.
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It may have been expressed in many different ways but the intriguing message that election officials came across while counting votes in Sunday's election was too common to be dismissed as a natural mistake.
Among the more than 1 million invalid ballots counted as of yesterday were an unknown number that were disqualified because voters chose to spell out their dislike of caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The most prevalent messages on the invalid ballots, according to vote counters, were "Thaksin get out" and "Thaksin, you are evil".
Other messages, some conveyed in just one short sentence and others occupying almost the entire ballot, contained vulgar abuse and profanities. Besides written messages, many voters drew funny pictures, including a square-faced cartoon character, apparently aimed at mocking Thaksin, according to election officials.
A voter, who wanted to be identified only as Nok, told The Nation she intentionally wrote down on the ballot "Thaksin, you are the worst of all evil" although she knew it would make her vote invalid.
"I just wanted to show that I no longer want him as prime minister," she said.
As of yesterday, the Election Commission (EC) estimated the invalid ballots from Sunday's election would exceed 1 million or about 3 per cent of the overall figure of eligible voters. The tally is a record breaker since Thailand first introduced elections under a democratic regime more than half a century ago.
An election official in Phichit province confirmed yesterday that many ballots he counted contained the same hand-written message "Thaksin get out".
"Other ballots were marked too many times or randomly crossed all over," said the official.
In Phitsanulok, a polling official said he also saw anti-Thaksin messages written on ballots while manning a vote-counting centre on Sunday night.
"I saw "Thaksin get out" on many ballots. Some others wrote "Hate square-faced man", the official said.
The director of the EC provincial office in Yala, Varothai Naewbantad, said a large number of voters made their ballots invalid by intentionally writing on them.
"They just wrote down what they wanted. Some messages were way too rude to be disclosed," he said.
Varothai said this had never happened before and the number of invalid ballots in Yala in past elections was remarkably low as voters had a good understanding of politics and the election process.
Director of the EC provincial office in Chachoengsao, Chukiat Rojanapinan, said the record of invalid ballots in all constituencies of the province exceeded 10 per cent, the highest in its history.
"In the last election, we had 3.6 per cent of invalid ballots. But this time, it is clear that voters intended to make their ballots invalid," he said.
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