Poll will thrill voters, but will it serve them?

One academic nailed it when he said recently that, after all the talk about democracy, about people’s power, and about voting being for the best interests of the public, our “relevance” will last about four seconds – the average time it takes for a voter to mark the ballot.
Millions of us will cast our votes, then it will be up to a small bunch of people what happens next. Anyone who thinks the election is about taking back control must think again. Control is taken through, not by, voters. We vote to hand over control to a select few, allowing them to make decisions that may or may not be in our favour. 
Military-backed Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha will have the support of most (if not all) of the 250-strong appointed Senate, meaning he will need about another 130 votes from the elected House of Representatives to retain power. As for Pheu Thai, assuming it wins around the same number of constituencies as it did at the last election, 204, it will need another 172 votes at least.
Politically-divided Thais will be concerned about whose side the Democrats take and whether Bhum Jai Thai and the Shinawatras will continue in a sulk with each other. That is the case in point. We are not voting so that we will get the best education minister available, or so that the new government will help cut mobile phone or Internet fees. Many of us will go to the polls hoping to snub Prayut or shut the door on Thaksin Shinawatra – and that’s it.
The fun part is that unless a voter directly chooses Pheu Thai or a new party that openly supports Prayut, voting will be a hit and miss affair. A sizeable number of politicians will stay on the fence, waiting until the last minute before placing their “bets”. Simply put, if you vote for a medium-size party in the hope that it will either back or reject Prayut, you may be disappointed.
The Democrat Party is in the stickiest dilemma, or so it seems. It must choose between supporting Prayut outright and being jeered for it, or joining hands with Pheu Thai to shut him out and receiving even louder jeers, or rejecting both and settling for the opposition benches. The second choice is the unlikeliest while the third choice carries the risk of seeing a government they abhor, which again will bring them thunderous jeers.
The Democrats’ situation is weird. While it is fair to say that they are in an unenviable position, they can also become the biggest kingmaker. Considering that Prayut has most, if not all, senators in his pocket, the Democrats’ support will all but assure his continuation as prime minister. Simply put, total votes from the Senate plus the pro-military Palang Pracharat Party plus the Democrats will likely top the magic number of 376.
On the other hand, a Democrat-Pheu Thai alliance, unlikely as it seems, should win support from much of the rest of the House of Representatives. Without the Democrats, Pheu Thai needs to do even better than in the last election, and hope the other parties – with the exception of Palang Pracharat and Suthep Thaugsuban’s camp – support it.
The election won’t be about who has the best policies on education, labour competitiveness and our ageing society. It will be about who is the smartest at manipulating the new constitutional rule for calculating the total number of seats for each party.
The new system works like this: Each voter ticks the box for their chosen constituency candidate, but that vote will also go towards the candidate’s party. The latter represents a “national vote”. The national votes will be tallied to produce rations of seats. If, according to the national ration, Party A is supposed to get 100 seats but has already won 95 constituency seats, it will get just five additional seats.
Obviously, the system won’t benefit parties that win constituency seats by a narrow margin of votes. On the other hand, a party that loses many constituencies but nevertheless wins substantial numbers of votes will have cause for celebration.
Pheu Thai has teamed up with Pheu Tham, seen as a shell party that won’t win constituency seats but could draw enough red-shirt votes to send party-list candidates to Parliament. Another emerging party, Pheu Chart, would serve the same function for Pheu Thai.
Still threatened with dissolution over alleged interference from Thaksin, Pheu Thai may also be employing both parties as “back-ups” to which its politicians and voters can switch should it be disbanded before the election. 
However, some observers believe that if Pheu Thai is dissolved, it will happen too close to the election to give its members time to switch to a new party. (A candidate must have been a member of their party for at least 90 days prior to the election.)
Nobody knows for sure whether Pheu Tham and Pheu Chart, plus the Prachachat Party of pro-Thaksin Wan Muhamad Noor Matha, were set up with the new electoral system in mind. What is certain is that Pheu Thai is better off with the new parties where the new system is concerned.
Having said that, both Prayut and Thaksin will almost certainly be held hostage by “lesser” political players. Do both men deserve this? Probably. Do Thai people deserve this? No, absolutely not.