Monday, August 22, 2011

More TAO upgrades?

On Friday the Royal Gazette had two announcements containing the constituencies of municipalities, normally the last step of a municipal upgrade or area change. The first of the two contains the constituencies for Wichianburi town, which was just recently upgraded, however the second one is rather surprising. Not only that it was published just two days after it was signed - normally these announcements take about 3 months until they show up in the Gazette, thus often after the election with the newly defined constituencies had been held already - the most notable thing about is the fact that I haven't seen anything about this municipality to exist before.

Tha Khanun (ท่าขนุน) in Thong Pha Phum district of Kanchanburi province covers the area of the subdistrict Tha Khanun outside the municipality Thong Pha Phum, which only covers the area around the district office. The upgrade is neither mentioned in the DOLA list of municipal changes of fiscal year 2011, nor does the website of the TAO mention it in any way. Sadly there are still no board meeting transcripts for this year, so I am left to speculating that this TAO is the first of the upgrades for fiscal year 2012 (which starts in October), and unlike previous cases the Election Commission has prepared the constituencies before the upgrade took place, to allow the municipal elections to take place within the 60 days after the end of term of the TAO council - and not many months later like it would be if the constituencies aren't ready at the time of upgrade, which according to the dates in the Royal Gazette announcement seems to have been the standard case in the previous years.

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