Municipal elections in Ko Samui

Since Ko Samui has been upgraded to higher municipal level, it now has to hold an election to appoint the members of the town council as well as the new mayor. Though I cannot find the actual numbers now, I remember to have read that the number of council members depends on the municipal level, so now after the municipal upgrade the constituencies must get adjusted accordingly.

I have borrowed the photo from the Japanese blog Soma Samui. While it was intended to show the bicycle rental shop to the left, it also quite prominently shows the election poster of former subdistrict municipality mayor Varakorn Rattanarak (วรากรณ์ รัตนรักษ์), one of the candidates for the new town mayor post. Strangely, this poster now shows again the word "Thesaban Nakhon" (เทศบาลนคร meaning city municipality), while as reported earlier apparently the initial decision to make it a city was revoked and the town status (thesaban mueang) was granted instead.

The newspaper Samui Express gives some background on the preparations for the election in the article Samui election heating up. According to that article the election will take place in "this month" (strange way to formulate in an article from July 21, why not state the planned date; anyway July is over already now) but may be delayed to September.