180 Khwaeng in Bangkok

It seems the number of subdistricts (Khwaeng, แขวง) in Bangkok has just or will very soon be increased from 169 to 180. The Thai Wikipedia Potapt, who is very active in keeping the articles on the subdivisions up-to-date in the Thai Wikipedia, has just updated all the relevant articles both in the Thai and in the English Wikipedia. I haven't yet seen any announcement in the Royal Gazette, but as he is always quite conservative in adding things, I trust he has very good sources that these changes are indeed forthcoming - but will wait till I have the official announcement to update Wikidata and the German Wikipedia then.

The new subdistricts will end the oddity of districts with just a single subdistrict. Its sad that the latest list of the ccaatt codes was just published, so it will be a guessing game which numbers are to be assigned to the new districts.

• Phra Khanong district: Bang Chak subdistrict split to create Phra Khanong Tai subdistrict (แขวงพระโขนงใต้). District will have 2 subdistricts now, new subdistrict probably receiving the code 100910 as the next free code.
• Phaya Thai district: Sam Sen Nai subdistrict split to create Phaya Thai subdistrict (แขวงพญาไท). District will have 2 subdistricts now, new subdistrict probably receiving the code 101406. The original subdistricts having the name Phaya Thai in their name were split off to Ratchathewi district in 1989.
• Din Daeng district: Din Daeng subdistrict split to create Ratchadaphisek subdistrict (แขวงรัชดาภิเษก). District will have 2 subdistricts now, new subdistrict probably receiving the code 102602.
• Suan Luang district: Suan Luang subdistrict split to create On Nut and Phatthanakan subdistricts (แขวงอ่อนนุช, แขวงพัฒนาการ). District will have 3 subdistricts now.
• Saphan Sung district: Saphan Sung subdistrict split to create Rat Phatthana and Thap Chang subdistricts (แขวงราษฎร์พัฒนา, แขวงทับช้าง). District will have 3 subdistricts now.
• Bang Na district: Bang Na subdistrict split into two new subdistrict named Bang Na Nuea (แขวงบางนาเหนือ) and Bang Na Tai (แขวงบางนาใต้). It remains to be seen if this will be done by abolishing the previous subdistrict and creating two new subdistricts, or by renaming it and creating one new ones.
• Bang Bon district: Bang Bon subdistrict split into four new subdistrict named Bang Bon Nuea (แขวงบางบอนเหนือ), Bang Bon Tai (แขวงบางบอนใต้), Khlong Bang Phran (แขวคลองบางพราน) and Khlong Bang Bon (แขวงคลองบางบอน). It remains to be seen if this will be done by abolishing the previous subdistrict and creating four new ones, or by renaming it and creating three new ones.

Bangkok governor resigns

At first look, it sounds like a nonsensical act - Bangkok governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra has resigned from his post today, to take effect tomorrow just one day before his term would have ended nominally on Thursday. However, this one day will have a bigger consequence for the forthcoming election. In case a governor fulfills his term, the next election has to take place within 45 days after the end of term. However, in case of an early resignation, the election has to take place within 60 days after the resignation - which makes sense to give the Election Commission enough time to prepare the elections to do those preparative steps which could be done in the last days of the nominal term otherwise. But since it is just one day this time, those preparations should be done already and the Election Commission could still choose the original scheduled election day. However it seems

If incumbent Governor Sukkhumbhand Paribatra resigns before completing his term on Friday, the gubernatorial race will take place on March 3 - but if he completes his term, the election will be held on February 17.
The Nation, Ten challenges for next city governor, 2012-01-07

According to Bangkok Post, adding two or three weeks to the election campaign is labeled to increase fairness in the election.

MR Sukhumbhand wanted his resignation to take effect before Jan 10 to allow fair compeition (sic!) in the Bangkok governor election, he said.
Bangkok Post, Sukhumbhand to resign Tuesday, 2012-01-07

There is however one big cloud over the re-election bid of MR Sukhumbhand, who is now facing investigations by the DSI over the extension of the contract with the company operating the Skytrain. Its a kind of deja vu - four years ago Sukhumbhand predecessor Apirak Kosayodhin resigned just one month after being reelected, also due to corruption charges. It will certainly be an interesting campaign.

A very interesting read in preparation to the campaign is the opinion published by Bangkok Post shortly after Christmas.

Bangkok governor, what is the job - other than keeping pet dogs out of public parks and collecting garbage and dumping it in Nakhon Pathom province?
[...]
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration Act, BE 2528 outlines the power and role of the Bangkok governor, but other than hiring and firing city officials, everything else is vague and overlaps with the functions of the national government.
[...]
When functions are overlapped, budgets are overlapped and very little gets done, but a lot of people get to eat the cake. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the individual governors, but it is a problem of the definition, the status of Bangkok.
Bangkok Post, Bangkok governor, it's an insane job, 2012-12-27

New sister city for Bangkok

On January 4th, Bangkok governor Sukhumbhand signed a contract with the mayor of the Cambodian capital city Phnom Penh to make the two cities sister cities.

Phnom Penh is the 24th city to team-up with Bangkok. The capital's other twin cities include Washington DC, Beijing, Moscow, St Petersburg, Budapest, Brisbane, Manila, Seoul, Jakarta, Vientiane, Tehran and Shanghai.
The Nation, Phnom Penh, Bangkok now twin cities, 2012-01-05

When I last wrote about the sister cities of Bangkok, the Wikipedia article had totally bogus entries, and there was only a outdated list on the website of the city administration listing just 14 sister cities. When rechecking now, Wikipedia had the list of 22 sister cities same as the website of Bangkok - and someone already added Phnom Penh as well. Since The Nation had a partial list in their article as quoted above, it seems the missing city is Tehran, the capital of Iran. I wasn't able to find any other reference confirming that relationship, and have become somewhat skeptical in believing that newspaper.

Changwat Krung Thep

Driving the Nonthaburi-Bangkok road, I spotted a very strange sign at the boundary between Nonthaburi and Bangkok. Sadly there was no chance to stop as the road is currently very narrow due to the construction of the Pink Line Skytrain which once finished will connect Nonthaburi with Bangkok very conveniently, so I could not take a photo at that time, and haven't yet returned to Bangkok yet. But luckily now Google Streetview comes to my rescue to proof I wasn't imagining things, and having something to show with this post.

The sign reads "Khet Changwat Krung Thep", and had a second similar sign below it I could not read fast enough. The strange thing - Bangkok is not a Changwat, like I have written about that Bueng Kan is the 76th province, and not the 77th like so many believe not knowing the administrative details of Bangkok Metropolis. Yet while I can understand that many laypeople don't know these details, I was clearly surprised that an official sign does show this wrong information.

Well, actually there was a Changwat Krug Thep, but only for the short period between December 1971 when the provinces Phra Nakhon and Thonburi were merged, and December 1972 when the law on the special administrative area of Krung Thep became effective [Gazette]. But even during that time it wasn't named Changwat, but "Nakhon Luang Krung Thep Thon Buri" (นครหลวงกรุงเทพธนบุรี). While the sign I spotted was a bit weathered, it was certainly not 35 years old, so it must have been made at a time when it was really wrong already. Amazing Thailand as usual...

But in fact even more amazing is to try the term "จังหวัดกรุงเทพ" on the Royal Gazette search page, as this returns more than 100 results. For example in 2006 the Election Commission announced the Senator election in Bangkok calling it Changwat [Gazette] - though in the actual PDF it is correct without Changwat, only in the search index it is wrong. Though I haven't checked them all, this seems to be only an issue with the database, where the clerk entering the topic fell into the misconception that Bangkok is a province.

View Larger Map

Split of Bang Khae district back on the agenda

The split of Bang Khae district, the largest of all the 50 districts of Bangkok by population, is back on the agenda after it was not pushed strong enough to become effective with the 2010 district council elections. Khun Wisarut from the 2bangkok forum has found an article in the Daily News newspaper (เดลินิวส์) which shows that the split of this district is now again in discussion.

According to that article, the city council of Bangkok now sets up a working group to gather the facts like the necessary budget, do a public hearing in the district, so the issue can then be discussed in the next council meeting in June. As the next district council elections will be in 2014 and it is probably preferred to let the current council complete its term, there should be ample time to have the change be effective till then.

Province creation draft laws

While looking for news on the proposed province of Fang, I stumbled on a tweet mention not just this but a total of five proposed new provinces

5 ร่าง พ.ร.บ. ในสภา : พ.ร.บ.จัดตั้งจังหวัดธนบุรี , จังหวัดมีนบุรี, จังหวัดพระนารายณ์, จังหวัดฝาง และ จังหวัดสว่างแดนดิน

It turns out, that the parliament is currently considering or will soon consider draft laws on these five proposals, none of them approved by the cabinet yet. But for each I was able to find a document on the parliament website with many details on the proposals. Most interesting are the proposals to create Thonburi and Minburi province, splitting off those areas most badly hit by last years flooding from the jurisdiction of Bangkok special administrative area (BMA). Even though these areas are somewhat different from the central part of Bangkok, splitting them into separate provinces will only make any coordinated development planning in the huge city more difficult - to me it would even make more sense to incorporate Samut Prakan and Nonthaburi into Bangkok like it was during World War II. Even though the partial rollback of decentralization by weakening BMA probably will attract some interest in certain circles of politicians, I have strong doubts that these two provinces will become reality.

In detail, the five provinces under discussion are:

• Fang province (จังหวัดฝาง), covering the districts Fang, Mae Ai and Chai Prakan of Chiang Mai province [Draft law]
• Phra Narai (จังหวัดพระนารายณ์), splitting the east of Lopburi province covering the districts Khok Charoen, Chai Badan, Tha Luang, Phatthana Nikhom, Lam Sonthi Sa Bot and Mong Muang, with the center at Chai Badan. Actually, a proposal floating around for many years already - it even already has an entry on the Thai Wikipedia. [Draft law]
• Sawang Daen Din (จังหวัดสว่างแดนดิน), splitting the districts Sawang Daen Din, Seka and Bung Khla from Sakon Nakhon province - which looks like a nonsense proposal, as Seka and Bung Khla are in Bueng Kan province, and even don't border Sawang Daen Din. A little later in the rationale for the draft law, even more districts of Bueng Kan are listed, but still not connecting with the main district. [Draft law]
• Thonburi (จังหวัดธนบุรี), covering the districts Thonburi, Bangkok Yai, Khlong Sam, Taling Chan, Bangkok Noi, Bang Khun Thian, Phasi Charoen, Nong Khaem, Rat Burana, Bang Phlat, Chom Thong, Bang Khae, Thawi Watthana, Thung Khru and Bang Bon - thus all the districts west of the Chao Phraya, the area which was Thonburi district until its merger with Pha Nakhon in 1972. [Draft law]
• Minburi (จังหวัดมีนบุรี), covering the districts Min Buri, Nong Chok, Khlong Sam Wa, Bang Khen, Sai Mai, Don Mueang, and Lak Si. Only roughly the area which the historical Min Buri province had until it was incorporated into Phra Nakhon in 1932. [Draft law]

Thursday linkage

Mark at travelfish takes a quick look at the most common words found in geographical names in Thailand, like the word Chiang found for several northern Thai provinces and districts.

 Richard Barrow visited Nakhon Phanom recently and posted a photo of the former residence of the province governor. This historic building now houses a local museum, photos of the interior are found in Richards Facebook gallery. If I'd ever make it to this remote northeastern province, this museum will be on the list of places I have to visit.

 Bangkok Library has posted two sets [1,2] of Bangkok district maps taken from documents of the BMA - see for example this map of Taling Chan showing the peculiar shape of Khlong Chakphra subdistrict (แขวงคลองชักพระ), covering just a narrow strip of land along the canal. The maps are however a bit outdated, the latest subdistricts aren't included, e.g. at Don Mueang.

Muban of Bangkok

While looking at the flood maps provided by Longdo to check whether my wife's house escaped inundation, I spotted placemarks for village headmen offices (ที่ทำการผู้ใหญ่บ้าน) in Taling Chan district. Some time ago, I already wrote about a similar office further west in Thawi Watthana district, since to my knowledge the administrative villages within Bangkok were already abolished by 2005.

Actually, I had seen the sign in front of that specific office many times already while driving past it, but never stopped there for a short photo. No name is given for that village, only that it is village 10 of Bang Phrom subdistrict, so I got curious and tried to find at least how many villages each of the subdistricts actually has. Only thing Google returned was an obscure Excel sheet from the Ministry of Education, which contains the geocodes of the villages and several columns of numbers - if I guess right it is the number of children for the ages 0 to 20. And it also contains the strange Muban 77 and 78, so these are really the administrative villages I was looking for.

According to that sheet, there are a total of 810 administrative villages - a bit more than the 279 which in 2005 still had headmen. There are also some strange numbers, for example Don Mueang subdistrict only has the villages number one, four, five and eleven, and the newly created Sanam Bin subdistrict only village nine. The fact that Sanam Bin is already inside this sheet shows that it is rather up-to-date, therefore these villages are still existing at least for statistical or registration purposes.

Sister cities of Bangkok

Partner cities of Aachen, Germany

If one believes Wikipedia, then Bangkok has quite an impressive long list of partner cities from all over the world - a total of 28 at the time of writing this article. While its of course possible that a major city like Bangkok does have relationships with so many other cities, it is a bit surprising that there are three cities in Australia in the list. Some of the entries even have references to news articles, so I had no reason so far to doubt that list.

But again kudos to my reader Ian, who spotted his hometown Perth on the list, and since he not heard about the twinning before checked with the website of the city council of Perth where he found it to be not listed. Alerted by him, I found Berlin to be on the list as well, and again the city website of Berlin does not mention it either. So after some searching I finally found the corresponding listing on the website of the Bangkok city council (BMA). According to that page, Bangkok has just 14 sister cities, in Thai เมืองพี่เมืองน้อง, just half of those listed in Wikipedia.

• Washington DC, USA, started in 1962 [Details]
• Beijing, China, started in 1993 [Details]
• Budapest, Hungary, started in 1997 [Details]
• Brisbane, Australia, started in 1997 [Details]
• Moscow, Russia, started in 1997 [Details]
• St. Petersburg, Russia, started in 1997 [Details]
• Manila, Philippines, started in 1997 [Details]
• Jakarta, Indonesia, started in 2002 [Details]
• Hanoi, Vietnam, started in 2004 [Details]
• Vientiane, Laos, started in 2004 [Details]
• Astana, Kasachstan, started in 2004 [Details]
• Fukuoka, Japan, started in 2006 [Details]
• Seoul, South Korea, started in 2006 [Details]
• Chaozhou, China, started in 2005 [Details]

But what about the other 14? As on Wikipedia there is no central fact checking, it is always possible that wrong information can be added - either intentionally as a kind of vandalism, or because of misunderstanding the facts by good faith editors. Or it is of course also possible that the list on the BMA website is out of date, and new sister cities like Ragunda in Sweden, which according to the reference on Wikipedia by a Swedish news article was started in 2005, might be simply not yet listed.

So I have added several {{Citation needed}} tags to the Wikipedia article to at least warn the reader that the information might be wrong. I somehow doubt whether asking anyone at BMA by email would give any result. Here in Germany its popular to have a sign listing the twin towns at the main road entering the town, like the one I photographed for Aachen and placed into this article, but never noticed any such in Thailand.

On the other hand, I found one Thai news from earlier this year that the governor of Bangkok has just signed a Letter of Intent with the Korean city Busan to start a partnership, this not listed on either lists. So it seems Bangkok is still collecting more sister cities.

33 constituencies in Bangkok

Though I am still waiting for the constituency definitions to be published in the Royal Gazette, I have started to work through the list as published by Manager and convert it into my favorite data format XML. I guess most interesting are those constituencies in Bangkok itself, so for these I additionally also made a simple map.

One thing I noticed is that the constituencies this time cover full administrative units, same as the early single-seated constituencies 2000 and 2005 - I somehow thought I remember constituency definitions using streets and not the subdivisions as boundaries, but after rechecking the older announcements I now know that must have been constituencies for the local elections. But nevertheless the newly created subdistricts from 2009 probably came in handy, for example the district Don Mueang which previously had no subdistricts is now split between constituency 11 and 12 along the boundary of the new subdistrict Sanam Bin (airport).

A little statistics on these constituencies - while the mean value of citizen per constituency is 172,769, the actual population values differ quite a lot. The constituency with the lowest population and thus the highest electoral weight of each vote is constituency 11, which covers the district Lak Si and Sanam Bin subdistrict of Don Mueang, and has only 136,516 citizen. The other extreme is constituency 6 which covers the districts Din Daeng and Phaya Thai and has a population of 209,173. Of course the population isn't the same as the number of eligible voters, but the population on December 31st 2010 is the criteria for the number of constituencies per province, and should therefore also be the criteria for drawing the constituency boundaries within each province.

Ork map for Bangkok

Almost one year ago, a tweet from Newley Purnell pointed me to the maps designed by Ork posters. Since they only cover cities in the US, I tried my luck and applied to the map of Bangkok. These maps are nothing but the boundaries of the boroughs, districts, quarters or whatever other subdivision the corresponding city has, overlayed with the names of the subdivisions in the plain Sans Serif font of DIN 1451.

Luckily fellow Wikipedian hdamm already made a vector map for the districts of Bangkok, so all I had to do was to place the names on top of that. The main difficulty were the very small districts in the center of Bangkok, especially the tiny Samphanthawong with a long name. But nevertheless I think my map doesn't look that bad, especially considering I just spend a few hours creating it and have no earlier record of being an artist or designer. There is probably still some room for fine-tuning the image, also a separate version with the names in the Thai alphabet might be worth considering, especially now I know the standard fonts for the Thai road signs. And of course one could do the same with any other of the 75 provinces, or for the whole country - but there the small provinces near Bangkok make it almost impossible to read.

Since hdamm had his map released under cc-by-sa license, I have to release my artwork under the same terms, thus everyone is free to copy it provided the attribution is given, and derived works are under the same license - though for now I keep the actual SVG for myself only..

Just sad that from the millions I will now earn by selling prints or shirts with this map in Bangkok, most of the money will go to the lawyer to protect me against the lawsuit Ork poster will file for copying their concept... At least I will be able to keep the customer busy, as soon they'd have to buy the upgrade with the planned new district. Actually, I withheld this posting for almost a year so I can make it public after the new district is created, but now the date for its creation is more dubious again I don't want to wait longer for grabbing the publicity this map might give this humble blog.

District council election results

District Councils, Round 2

The local elections in Bangkok last Sunday confirmed the results of the first round in 14 districts some weeks ago, the fact that Bangkok is now a stronghold for the Democratic Party - though the low turnout of 41.15% limits any conclusions on the potential result of the parliament elections. To me a positive sign is the fact that the New Politics Party aligned with the nationalist PAD failed to gain any seat, neither in any of the district councils nor the city council.

In the map I have visualized the results of the district council elections as found at siamintelligence, where most of the districts now have all the councilors from the Democratic Party. Five districts (marked in red) - Huai Khwang, Nong Chok, Nong Khaem, Phasi Charoen and Thonburi - have their council completely filled with Phuea Thai candidates, in Thung Khru (marked in grey) the council will consist of 6 Democrats and 1 Phuea Thai member. A special case is Phra Nakhon, where the whole council is filled by independent candidates. For the results of the first round in the 14 districts left yellow in the map see my previous posting.

City Council

For the city council, 45 seats will be filled by Democrats, 15 by Phuea Thai and one independent. Plotting the party results by district for these elections, the map does not look much different than the one for the district councils, only that it was an independent candidate who won in Lak Si district,
Strangely, my map does not fully fit with the one I found at Bangkok Post, not sure whether it was my source or the one of Bangkok Post which had mistakes or had later corrected preliminary results. I have Phasi Charoen go to the Democrats, while Bangkok Post has drawn it to be Phuea Thai; also Bang Khaen according to my source has one constituency won by Democrats and one by Phuea Thai, not completely Phuea Thai as in BP.

While there are a few complaints filed, but even if accepted these won't change the overall result much. Sadly I have no equally detailed results for the elections 4 years ago, the Wikipedia article only covers the first round of the district council in full depth. For an independent analysis of the results, BangkokPundit has just posted a very detailed one.

Bangkok district council elections

This Sunday the elections for the district councils in 36 districts - 14 districts in the east of Bangkok already had their elections on June 6 - as well as the election for the BMA council, so also the voters in the 14 districts have to go to the ballot box again. In the life-style BK magazine, a rather unlikely place to find anything about politics, there's now a great article on these elections. It includes many smaller details on the actual tasks of each councilor I did not know before, strange I never notice such a background article in any of the major English newspapers in Bangkok. The most notable part in the article is the following:

Up until the new military constitution of 2007, that aimed to cut abuse of power and corruption, being a city councilor was a potentially lucrative post. Each one received some 25 million baht to spend pretty much as he or she pleased in their district: add street lights, build a park, expand a road. Three million baht of that budget was even chalked down to personal expenses, with practically no oversight whatsoever.

Now I don't wonder anymore why for example in Bangkok Noi, the district I know best, it has kitsch animal figurines in the green middle part of Charansanitwong road - probably some money from that budget which needed to be spent, and no better and more useful idea came up.

Just sad that this article does not answer one of the things I wonder about a lot - why do these 14 districts vote their district councils some weeks before the others, so for the city council election they have to go to the ballot twice. As the turnout for these local elections is relatively weak, keeping the two elections together at the same date would make the turnout at least a bit higher.

By the link at the end of the article, I also now discovered the Press Release website of the city of Bangkok, and it even has RSS feeds, so I can comfortable monitor it for the news relevant for my topics, so I might be able to catch news of the planned new district and subdistricts more timely. But as usual, all just in Thai, but at least with Google Translate it get accessible.

As I was in Bangkok before the campaigning for these election actually started, I have no photo of election posters to decorate this article - but at 2bangkok it has a big gallery, including defaced ones and explanations of the slogans or the defacement.

No new district in Bangkok this year?

Subdistricts of Bang Khae

It seems the new district which I was expecting for Bangkok to be created this year won't become reality right now. The district council elections this year would be an ideal date for such an act, since otherwise the council of both the new and the parent district has to be elected an additional time. In fact, the last changes in the district boundaries in Bangkok was in 2002, the same year it had council elections. And the last new districts were created in 1997 (Lak Si, Sai Mai, Khan Na Yao, Saphan Sung, Wang Thonglang, Khlong Sam Wa, Watthana, Thwai Watthana, Bang Na, Bang Khae, Thung Khru, Bang Bon) were done few month before the district elections as well. The previous round of district creations was in 1993, another term before.

But the elections for Bang Khae will take place on August 29, and now the number of councilors for each district was announced in the Royal Gazette. Each district council has a minimum number of 7 councilors. Starting with 150,000 citizen there will be eight councilors, and above 200,000 there would be nine - but since Bang Khae with 193,478 citizen is the largest there are only district councils with seven or eight councilors. The table in the announcement now lists Bang Khae as usual, and does not list any new district name like Bang Khae Nuea, or a population of about 90,000 for Bang Khae.

This would also explain why I have failed to find any hint on the planned district, except one website and one interpellation reply mentioning it. Especially the (rather creepy) website of the district itself mentions nothing of it, and even with the newspaper only picking it up when it becomes official at least there some of the preparations should be found. Unless I get totally surprised in the next three weeks, the split of Bang Khae has been delayed for four years. Maybe by then more than one district gets split, as there are a few more which have a quite big population already. However new subdistricts are still possible this year, these don't depend on election dates and at last years creation it was mentioned that further subdistricts are planned.

Bangkok Constituency 6

Though it is only a by-election this Sunday to find a replacement for the deceased Member of Parliament Tiva Ngernyuang (ทิวา เงินยวง), the fact that it is so short after the red shirt riots and also close to where these took place makes this a kind of showdown between the government Democrat party and the opposition Phuea Thai party. While I leave the actual coverage of this election to the political blogs, the location of this constituency is something within this blog's scope.

For the nation wide elections, Bangkok is subdivided into 12 constituencies which each elect three member of parliament - given the high population its no wonder that Bangkok is the province with the highest number of seats. The second place goes to Nakhon Ratchasima, which has 16 seats in 6 constituencies. The constituencies currently in use are those defined for the December 2007 general election, and were published in the Royal Gazette in November 2007. With only a few exceptions, the constituencies cover whole districts, and since there is no such exception in Bangkok its rather easy to create a map with all the constituencies right from that announcement.

The table content of the announcement, only transcribing the Thai names and numbers, reads as follows:

No	Population	Seats	Area
1.	486,105	3	Dusit, Phra Nakhon, Pom Prap Sattru Phai, Samphanthawong, Bang Rak, Pathum Wan, Ratchathewi
2.	488,770	3	Sathon, Bang Kho Laem, Yan Nawa, Khlong Toei, Watthana
3.	454,981	3	Din Daeng, Huai Khwang, Wang Thong Lang, Lat Phrao
4.	512,649	3	Bang Sue, Lak Si, Chatuchak, Phaya Thai
5.	512,099	3	Bang Khen, Sai Mai, Don Mueang
6.	497,519	3	Nong Chok, Khlong Sam Wa, Khan Na Yao, Bueng Kum
7.	500,079	3	Bang Kapi, Saphan Sung, Minburi, Lat Krabang
8.	461,682	3	Suan Luang, Prawet, Bang Na, Phra Khanong
9.	467,992	3	Thonburi, Khlong Sam, Bangkok Yai, Chom Thong
10.	441,299	3	Rat Burana, Thung Khru, Bang Khun Thian, Ban Bon
11.	458,014	3	Phasi Charoen, Bang Khae, Nong Khaem
12.	414,767	3	Bang Phlat, Bangkok Noi, Taling Chan, Thawi Watthana

In case you look for the constituencies of the other provinces and cannot read the Thai in the announcement well, Adam Carr has made maps with the original results of the 2007 election showing all of the constituencies country-wide.

Bangkok district election results

On June 6 the first round of the district council elections were held in the northeastern districts of Bangkok. According to the article in the Nation, the results were a success to the Democrat-led government. However it is far from an indication of the results of a general elections, not only the low voter turnout of just 35%, but also the fact that not parties but candidates are elected and therefore their personal power-bases make it hard to extrapolate the real political preferences. The article also gives a little background on the district councils, as well as states the date for the elections in the remaining 36 district as being set for August 29.

One advantage of being rather late with presenting these results is that I discovered now the results form every district is also published in the Royal Gazette - however only the names and votes of all candidates, their party affiliation, the total number of eligible voters and of votes cast are not in these PDFs.

District	Population	Councillors	Candidates	Winning Party	Gazette
Bang Kapi	150,166	8	24	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 39-40
Lat Phrao	122,371	7	16	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 41-42
Bueng Kum	147,712	7	18	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 43-44
Wang Thong Lang	115,713	7	14	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 45-46
Saphan Sung	88,013	7	15	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 47-48
Khan Na Yao	85,912	7	14	Phuea Thai	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 49-50
Bang Khen	185,901	8	16	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 51-52
Chatuchak	164,210	8	19	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 53-54
Lak Si	114,180	7	29	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 55-56
Don Mueang	165,433	8	30	Phuea Thai	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 57-58
Sai Mai	178,637	8	16	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 59-60
Min Buri	133,149	7	14	Mixed	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 61-62
Khlong Sam Wa	154,766	8	16	Democrats	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 63-64
Lat Krabang	152,528	8	38	Phuea Thai	พิเศษ 77 ง Page 65-67

1st round of District council elections in Bangkok

Districts having elections in 1st round

As the term of the district councils of 14 districts of Bangkok ended today, within 60 days the new elections must be held. Just few days ago the timeline for this first round was announced.

• April 29: End of term
• May 3-7: Application of candidates
• June 6: Election day, voting between 8 am and 3 pm

The 14 districts which will vote then are: Bang Kapi, Lat Phrao, Bueng Khum, Wang Thong Lang, Saphan Sung, Kan Na Yao, Bang Khen, Chatuchak, Lak Si, Don Mueang, Sai Mai, Min Buri, Khlong Sam Wa and Lat Krabang, as one can see in the map all in the northeast of Bangkok.

The other 36 district councils will end their term on July 22, the timeline for these elections apparently isn't set yet. But estimating from this first round an election date end of August or beginning of September is to be expected.

Bangkok birthday celebrations

Bangkok's Birthday Party
Originally uploaded by Ian Fuller

Bangkok is celebrating its 38th birthday in this week. Anyone wondering now that the city was around way longer - you are of course right, the city was founded in 1782, when the first king of the Chakri dynasty moved the capital to its current position. So the town is 227 years old, but what was started 38 years ago is the current administrative structure of Bangkok. In December 1971 the revolutionary decrees merging the province and municipalities of Phra Nakhon and Thonburi into a single province Krung Thep were issued by the coup group around Thanom Kittikachorn. Finally on December 13 1972 the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) was established, the entity which is now celebrating.

The actual decrees were the following

• Revolutionary decree 24, December 21 1971 - merge of the provinces Phra Nakhon and Thonburi to the province Nakhon Krung Thep Thonburi (นครหลวงกรุงเทพธนบุรี). This includes the merger of the Provincial Administrative Organizations to one new one named องค์การบริหารนครหลวงกรุงเทพธนบุรี.
• Revolutionary decree 25, December 21 1971 - merge of the municipalities Krung Thep and Thonburi to the city Luang (เทศบาลนครหลวง).
• Revolutionary decree 335, December 13 1972 - establishing of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (เทศบาลนครหลวง). This includes many smaller changes, like the abolishing of the muncipality, the PAO and the 11 sanitary district; also the district were renamed from Amphoe to Khet, and all of the new posts were defined.

Given the dates, the celebrations must refer to the last decree, but then it would be the 37th anniversary. Or maybe they celebrate the begin of the 38th year of the existence of BMA, which has begun on the first day of celebrations on December 14.

It was BKK Photographer who made me notice the celebrations on this anniversary, which however seem to be rather quiet, with some booths set up on the plaza in front the administration building next to the Giant Swing. For some photos see his set of flickr.

District council elections in Bangkok

Another Election is Coming
Originally uploaded by Ian Fuller

As BKK Photographer spotted the first truck with election campaign posters, it reminded me that the last elections for the district councils as well as the metropolitan council were already quite some time ago. In fact, they were in 2006, so the four year term ends next year. After some more searching, I finally also found an article giving the approximate dates for the elections.

Thus same as last time, the election will be split in to rounds. At first 14 district councils in the north and east of the city (see map) will see their end of term on April 29 2010, and therefore will have new election in June; whereas the term of other 36 district councils as well as the metropolitan council end on July 22, so the second round of elections is expected for September. I still have to research a lot on the local government of Bangkok, even the number of councillors I only just learned from the news article about their requested pay rise. As there are 357 Bangkok municipal councillors, the district councils cannot have equal sizes, and with the planned new district these numbers will change for sure.

As I will be in Bangkok in early June, I will at least be able to take several photos of the campaigning, but since none of the 14 district is close to the areas I normally stay I probably won't be able to do real first hand election reporting. But of course will post updates here whenever I learn new details about these forthcoming elections.

New district in Bangkok forthcoming

In petition ๐๘๕/ร the member of parliament and former Deputy Minister of Public Health Wichan Meenchaiyanant (นายวิชาญ มีนชัยนันท์), he asks for improvements in the government of Bangkok. While I don't get all which is said in the petition and in the reply by the Ministry of Interior, one part of the reply caught my attention.

กรุงเทพมหานครอยู่ระหว่างการพิจารณาดำเนินการแบ่งพื้นที่เขตของเขตบางแค ออกเป็น
๒ เขตการปกครอง ซึ่งในขณะนี้อยู่ระหว่างการดำเนินการจัดทำรายละเอียดคำบรรยายแนวพื้นที่เขต และแผนที่แนบท้ายประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย

Bangkok is considering to split the area of Bang Khae district to become 2 administrative districts. Currently it is at compiling the detailed boundary description and map to send to the Ministry of Interior.

Not surprising that Bang Khae is the district to be split, since it is the one with the highest population of all the 50 districts. So I suspect the boundary changes of the subdistrict in Bang Khae earlier this year were already in preparation of this split, now the Phetkasem highway could be the natural boundary of the two new districts, since it splits the current district in two approximate equal halves.

According to a news article from August 2007 in Manager, the new district is about to be named Bang Khae Nuea (เขตบางแคเหนือ, Northern Bang Khae), thus the project is already underway for quite some time; and if I can believe this report that new district will be created next year. This would make sense, as in March/April there should be the district council elections, so I expect the new district to be officially created directly before the election date.