On his website (www.meechaithailand.com), Meechai called for the elections held on April 2 and 23 to be invalidated. "The EC is empowered to organise a repeat vote if there is cause to suspect a flawed election outcome," he said.

He listed ways in which the EC had mismanaged the polls. By rushing the election to comply with the government's wish the EC had lost the public's trust, he said.

Although the EC has the leeway to schedule the election date within 60 days of the dissolution of the Lower House, it ruled in favour of the government and scheduled the election on April 2, 38 days after the dissolution.

This sparked an election boycott by the opposition parties and many voters resorted to civil disobedience, which caused insoluble electoral problems, he said.

Instead of factoring in the public sentiment, the EC made many hasty decisions aimed at completing the polls and sacrificed fairness in the process, Meechai said.

The EC appeared misguided in its concern over the 30-day deadline to convene the new House of Representatives. The deadline is the concern of the government, not the EC, he said.

The EC's top duty is to ensure a fair electoral process, but it opted to bend the electoral rules in order to fill House seats, Meechai said. It turned a blind eye to the funding of small parties to contest the polls and after complaints were filed about this it was forced to investigate but refused to suspend the polls, Meechai said.

Even after it found incriminating evidence of electoral fraud and launched legal proceedings to dissolve a minor party, it still did not invalidate the election's results, he said. Unless the election results are cancelled, the four-member EC will be haunted by its lapse of judgement that saw it sacrifice fairness in order to meet a deadline, Meechai added.