By Thai Newsroom Reporters
IN WHAT WAS SEEN as a sheer electoral irregularity, a woman farmer had been allegedly hired by a politically-associated wheeler-dealer to contest the senatorial election without signing her name on the application form and been elected at the district and provincial stages in Buriram.
Former Democrat MP Nipit Intharasombat today (July 6) posted on Facebook page to allege that the unidentified woman had been arranged by the unnamed political wheeler-dealer to run in the triple-tiered senatorial election without showing up at the application venue in Buriram to otherwise sign her name, then gone to the polls at the district and provincial levels and been elected. Buriram is the largest Bhumjaithai stronghold under de facto party boss Newin Chidchob.
However, the woman candidate who had claimed on her application form to be a farmer and native of the lower northeastern province had been outvoted in the national or final tier of the complicated, contentious senatorial election.
Nipit doubted that the alleged irregularity on the part of the unnamed woman candidate had been overlooked either inadvertently or deliberately by the Election Commission which, he said, could otherwise deem the entire electoral process in Buriram as “null and void.”
The former lawmaker’s comment apparently followed petitions filed by defeated senatorial contestants against many “puppet” rivals who had been allegedly hired and manipulated by those wheeler-dealers.
A few outvoted contenders had given the polling agency what they had claimed to be pieces of evidence substantiating the allegations that “puppet” contestants had purposely rigged the bloc votes as clandestinely directed by those wheeler-dealers who had held banquets and money talks with them at hotels prior to June 26’s national stage of the senatorial election.
That allegedly refers to 14 Buriram-based candidates, among others, who were elected at the national level on June 26 to become senators-designate.
Former Pheu Thai MP/defeated senatorial candidate Kusumalvati Sirikomut charged that Election Commission secretary-general Sawaeng Boonmee is a native of Buriram who had earlier worked for the late House speaker Chai Chidchob, father of the de facto Bhumjaithai boss.
The Election Commission has indefinitely postponed an official ratification of all 200 senators-designate and 100 others in reserve, pending deliberations on the formal complaints of vote riggings and other electoral wrongdoings.
CAPTIONS:
Top and Front Page: Officials counting votes in the senatorial election. Photos: Thai Rath
Insert: Former Democrat MP Nipit Intharasombat. Photo: Thai Rath
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