By Thai Newsroom Reporters
CERTAIN REFEREES at many voting units had been allegedly bought with money by rogue candidates to surreptitiously manipulate to rig the votes and land them undue victories in Sunday’s election for MPs, according to a partisan source.
Those kickback-taking, biased referees who had mingled with others at many voting units, especially those in remote areas of a constituency where the counting of votes on ballots from cardboard boxes may have been rarely noticed by uninvolved villagers, had covertly added a number of ballots manifesting votes for the rogue candidates and read them out during the rigged counting process. Consequently, the total of “good ballots” declared at some voting units evidently contradicted the total of votes won by all contestants combined.
In some cases, the bribed referees had literally dumped or destroyed counted votes-reporting papers and replaced them with doctored pads in the alleged rigging conspiracy to see to it that the rogue candidates finally get more votes than their rivals.
In other cases, the payoff-given referees had literally had somebody take away a large number of counted ballots which may have been replaced with forged ones in favour of the rogue candidates.
In lieu of the old-fashioned shopping of votes from prospective constituents with the help from local leaders and village-based public health volunteers, among others, the rogue candidates had turned to buying those referees at voting units with a relatively low expenditure of their money, according to the partisan source.
A range of 20,000 to 30,000 baht in cash had been clandestinely handed out from the rogue contestants or their entrusted canvassers to those biased referees per voting unit. A “bonus” in cash amounting to as much as 50,000 baht may have been added in case that they eventually scored an electoral triumph, albeit in illegitimate, rigging fashion.
In lieu of dumping a range of 30 million to 50 million baht to buy votes from the voters in a single constituency, the rogue runners may have spent less than 10 million baht with the use of those payoff-grabbing referees who could have been otherwise ordinary villagers or small-time hirees obedient and responsive to politically-partial local leaders who may have been tacitly connected with electoral candidates and parties.
Meanwhile, students and other people today (Feb.11) demanded that the voting ballots in all 400 constituencies nationwide be recounted now in the wake of allegations of electoral rigging and irregularities such as those reported in Chonburi, Samut Prakarn, Maha Sarakham, Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen and Chiang Mai, among a dozen others elsewhere.
Besides, the protesters who peacefully gathered at the Election Commission’s headquarters in Chaeng Wattana area of Bangkok pressed all seven commissioners of the polling agency to manifest their accountability for failure to hold a transparent, fair election by immediately resigning whilst the agency’ secretary-general Sawaeng Boonmee was vociferously taken to task for allegedly failing to keep the electoral rigging and irregularities at bay.
Sawaeng has been invariably accused of being more or less covertly associated with the ultra-conservative Bhumjaithai, core of the caretaker government who had emerged as the largest elected party in Sunday’s election grabbing 193 MP seats including 174 in constituency-based mode and 19 in party-listed mode.
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This and Front Page – Students and other people demanding a recount of ballots nationwide during their protest at the Election Commission’s headquarters today, Feb. 11, 2026. Photos – Amarin TV
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