The Supreme Administrative Court on Friday ruled in favour of the Election Commission (EC) in a dispute between the poll regulator and four parties who do not agree with the former's approach to redrawing election constituencies for the May 14 general election.
These four parties had petitioned the court to invalidate the EC's announcement dated March 16, which concerns the approach it has adopted in rearranging the election constituencies in Bangkok, Sakon Nakhon and Sukhothai, in particular.
These parties are Atavit Suwanpakdee, deputy leader of the Chartpattanakla Party and an election candidate in Bangkok; Phatthana Sapphaso (Pheu Thai), an election candidate in Sakon Nakhon; Wirat Wiriyapong (Democrat), an election candidate in Sukhothai; and Pat Tangbenjapol, a representative of the Democrat Party in Sukhothai.
The court, however, found the EC's decision to allow a deviation of more or less 10% from the average 162,766 population per MP formula in the calculation of the new number of constituencies in these provinces to be justifiable, said the ruling.
As such, the court agreed that the EC's redrawing of election constituencies, which has resulted in Bangkok now having 33 constituencies, Sakon Nakhon seven and Sukhothai four, conforms to Section 86(5) of the constituency, said the ruling.
Following the ruling, Mr Atavit said this new norm in the rearrangement of election constituencies must be accepted and the EC has the full authority to decide on what should be a proper way of redrawing constituencies for an election.
This means from now on, whatever new approaches the EC has for this purpose are final, he said, adding this will likely result in uncertainties in how election constituencies will be redrawn each time an election is called.
As a result, voters might be confused, he said, adding that in Bangkok, for instance, only four out of all 33 constituencies remain the same while the rest have been changed.
