Buriram PAO constituencies

End of December, the constituencies for the PAO elections in Buriram were announced in the Royal Gazette - a welcome reminder that a new round of local elections will be held this year. Looking at the website of the Election Commission, I found that this local election is really imminent, as it well be held on January 15 already. For the PAO chairmen, four candidates are contesting including the incumbent Karuna Chitchop (นางกรุณา ชิดชอบ), wife of the de facto Bhum Jai Thai party leader Newin Chidchop [EC website]. Therefore this election will receive quite some media attention, especially as it is also the only PAO election at this time - in 2004 when all PAO held elections on March 14, Buriram started early on December 14 2003 as the term of its council ended shortly before the nation-wide election date. However, if I am not mistaken, then the previous election was on January 20 2008, thus Karuna resigned before her term ended, and therefore now the PAO chairman election will be held one month before the PAO council election. Anyway, this announcement will only be the first in a series of several more, at least Chiang Mai needs new constituencies due to the creation of the new district Galyani Vadhana. And also Nong Khai and Bueng Kan will need a new constituency list - strangely there was none posted yet despite there were by-elections already to fill up both councils after the split of the province. Comparing the constituencies for Buriram in this announcement and the previous one dating from 2003 shows not that many changes.

• Mueang Buriram district now has 6 constituencies instead of 5, with the subdistrict Nai Mueang now forming the constituency 1.
• Lam Plai Mat district was reduced from four to three constituencies.
• In the districts Nong Ki and Prakhon Chai, the constituencies changed their boundaries.

Since both in 2003 and 2011 the constituencies cover only full subdistricts, I was able to write down the constituencies into XML format, and include them into my code project. If possible (and time allows) I'll do the same for the forthcoming further announcements as well.