EC awakens

PPT has had a couple of posts regarding the Department of Special Investigation’s “investigation” of the shenanigans of the Senate selection process, the Election Commission’s lagging and political interests.

It now appears that the DSI’s posturing and claims, especially from Bhum Jai Thai’s senators, of Thaksin Shinawatra’s “manipulation” of DSI has caused the somnolent EC into some kind of (public) action.

The Bangkok Post reports that the EC, after months and months of public silence, claims that it “has completed an investigation into 109 cases related to cheating or bloc voting in the Senate election, and sent three cases to the Supreme Court…”. That’s from the EC’s secretary-general Sawang Boonmee.

Sawang said the “cases include offering bribes, vote rigging, pre-arranged vote lists, block voting, abnormally high scores, and zero scores for some candidates.” It says nothing about unqualified candidates.

Then, and it might be poor reporting, he appears to contradict some of this “completed … investigation” by saying that the EC has just “appointed an advisory and coordination subcommittee to increase the efficiency of investigations.”

The subcommittee has members from police, the Anti-Money Laundering Office and (surprise, surprise) DSI.

In addition, the EC has “appointed an additional investigation and inquiry committee, consisting of four high-ranking officials from the EC and the other three from the RTP [police] to investigate and inquire into the objections to the selection of senators in all areas.”

Sawang said the EC had “received a total of 577 abnormal Senate election cases.” At this pace, if left to the EC, these investigations probably won’t be complete by the time the next selection process takes place.