Roughly 7m Thais are eligible to vote for the first time
good care of the price of rice in the market,” declares Uttama Savanayana, the leader of the Palang Pracharat party, to a sweating crowd of farmers in Thailand’s north-east. The party, which supports the ruling military regime and is staffed by several of its former ministers, such as Mr Uttama, was founded last year. It will carry the flag for the junta in a national election on March 24th.
To foil Pheu Thai, Mr Thaksin’s main political party, and help the likes of Palang Pracharat, the government has introduced a contorted, partly proportional voting system that favours smaller parties. Only 350 seats will go to the winner of the vote in each constituency. Votes for losing candidates will be used to allocate the 150 party-list seats.
The constitutional court, at the commission’s recommendation, has already dissolved another party favourable to Mr Thaksin, Thai Raksa Chart, and banned its leaders from politics for a decade. The court said that, by naming a princess as its preferred candidate for prime minister, the party had shown itself to be hostile to democracy, even though the move was not against the law and Thailand has had prime ministers of royal descent in the past.
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