Initial count puts TRT's return at 54%
Members of the People’s Alliance for Democracy cheer enthusiastically outside Government House while watching the live broadcast of Thaksin’s announcement yesterday that he will not accept the premiership in the next government.
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The Thai Rak Thai Party won just over half of the votes in Sunday's general election, poll officials said yesterday, citing incomplete results.
An unofficial count shows that candidates from Thai Rak Thai received a combined 15.1 million votes, or about 54 per cent, in 399 of the 400 constituencies they contested, according to the Election Commission (EC). That was against 9.3 million abstention votes. Ballots have been officially counted in more than two thirds of the constituencies. In the last general election in February 2005, Thai Rak Thai won 14.4 million votes in 400 constituencies. No candidates contested in Nonthaburi's Constituency 3, as all of those who registered were disqualified by the EC. The national voter turnout was 65 per cent, said Election Commissioner Prinya Nakchudtree yesterday, down from 72.5 per cent in the last election. The EC said it had verified the vote count in 286 constituencies, but that a complete count might not be ready until the end of the week. The partial count put the protest vote at about 46 per cent. No candidates were elected in 39 constituencies, including the one in Nonthaburi. Unchallenged candidates in the other 38 constituencies failed to win the necessary 20 per cent to confirm their victories. In Bangkok, Thai Rak Thai swept all 36 House seats up for grabs but only nine of its candidates managed to beat the unusually high "no vote" count. The "no votes" outnumbered those for Thai Rak Thai candidates in 27 of the city's constituencies.
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