Friday, March 4, 2011

Constitution amendments now officially announced

The amendments to the 2007 constitution, which were approved by parliament last month, have now been officially endorsed by HM the King and published in the Royal Gazette, therefore taking effect tomorrow. The amendments are published in two separate acts, the first one dealing with the Sections 93 to 98 of the constitution, that means the changes to the parliament elections. The second one only deals with Section 190 on international treaties. While the election changes has been discussed a lot in the media, it was the Section 190 which made the nationalist PAD starting their street protests again, as they scare this could lead to Thailand loose the few square kilometers around Phreah Vihar to Cambodia.

But since I only consider the constituencies as part of the topic of this blog, only the first announcement is relevant here. The change from 400 multi-seat consituencies to 375 single-seat constituencies means of course that the Election Commission has to redraw the constituencies. Luckily for them, for 53 provinces they can reuse the constituencies from the later invalidated 2006 election, the last election under the 1997 constitution with single-seat constituencies, and the EC is confident they can do the remaining provinces quickly. As Surat Thani is among these provinces and keeps the 6 seats, I don't need to amend my posting on the constituencies in that province.

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