The House of Representatives will be dissolved in early March and the election will be held by May 7 as tentatively set by the Election Commission, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha confirmed after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam briefed ministers about the election timeline and what the caretaker government can and cannot do after the House is dissolved.
Gen Prayut said he then informed the meeting that he planned to dissolve the House in March. Officially the four-year term of the House runs until March 24.
Asked later by reporters whether the dissolution would take place in early March, Gen Prayut said, “Yes, that’s about the time.”
Asked whether the election would be held exactly on May 7, the prime minister did not reply directly, saying it was up to the EC, which is in the process of making preparations for the poll.
During the lead-up to dissolution, the prime minister said cabinet ministers and MPs, if possible, should push for the passage of important legislative drafts as well as reforms to bring about some changes.
Gen Prayut rejected a suggestion that he was dragging his feet on setting a date for dissolution. Some political observers have said his United Thai Nation party needs as much time as possible to get ready to compete.
With or without a House dissolution, he said, the government would continue to work as a caretaker until a new government is in place.
In another development, the Constitutional Court on Tuesday accepted an EC request to rule on whether non-Thai people can be included in the calculations to determine how many MPs each province will get.
The court has reportedly set March 3 for the ruling, according to EC sources.
The commission has had to redraw constituency boundaries because the number of constituency MPs has been increased to 400 from 350 in 2019. There will be an additional 100 party-list members, compared with 150 four years ago.
Chairman Ittiporn Boonpracong said earlier that the EC would go ahead with the boundary redrawing exercise in any case, so that it can be prepared if its position is upheld.
The EC has concluded that there should be one MP for every 165,226 members of the public, based on an Interior Ministry census that showed a total population of 66,090,475 as of Dec 31 last year.
However, the figure compiled by the ministry included 983,994 non-Thais, both stateless people and others.
The EC has said that it used the same calculation method in 2019.
If the court rules that the EC’s method is in line with the 2017 charter, the EC is expected to proceed with its previous plans. If the court rules otherwise, the EC will have to make some new calculations.
If non-Thais are excluded, the EC will have to divide the resulting figure of 65,106,481 by 400. This would result in 162,766 people per constituency. The previous average was 165,226.
In this case, four provinces — Tak, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and Samut Songkhram — would have fewer MPs than earlier calculated. Four other provinces — Udon Thani, Lop Buri, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Pattani — would have more MPs.
