Yesterday the official candidate registration of the gubernatorial elections in Bangkok has started, and already on the first day 18 candidates have registered. Since 16 have registered directly at the start of the registration period, the numbers on the ballots for them were drawn in a lottery, whereas the remaining two got the number in order of their registration. The registration period end on Friday, so a few more candidates may get added to the list.
Only two of the 18 candidates run under a party label, and its probably one of these two who will win the election - incumbent M.L. Sukhumbhand Paribatra (ม.ร.ว.สุขุมพันธ์ บริพัตร) running for the Democrat Party with the number 16, and Pongsapat Pongcharoen (พล.ต.อ.พงศพัศ พงษ์เจริญ) for Phue Thai with number 9. From the polls posted by BKK Mango it looks like an open race between them. For those able to read Thai, Richard Barrow has also collected the social web pages for the major candidates.
Whereas in most local elections there are usually only two or three candidates, and sometimes even just a single candidate without any competitor, the number of candidates for the Bangkok governor is always much higher - both due to the larger electorate and thus also the larger number of eligibly candidates, but also due to the much larger media coverage even for those candidates who never have a chance to win. As far as I was able to find, in the recent BKK gubernatorial elections there were always more than 15 candidates.
No comments:
Post a Comment