BANGKOK (AFP) – Thais filled schoolyards, temples, and government offices to vote yesterday in the first election since a 2014 coup, with a high turnout expected among a public who received a cryptic last-minute warning from the Thai king to support ”good” leaders to prevent ”chaos.”
All television stations repeated the rare statement by King Maha Vajiralongkorn moments before polls opened.
Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and the palace is nominally above the political fray.
But the institution retains unassailable powers and is insulated from criticism by a harsh royal defamation law.
Yesterday’s election pits a royalist junta and its allies against the election-winning machine of billionaire ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra and an unpredictable wave of millions of first-time voters.
The kingdom remains bitterly divided despite the ruling junta’s pledge to rescue it from a decade-long treadmill of protests and coups.
Politicians across the spectrum fear a stalemate under election rules, written by the junta, which limit the chances of any single party emerging with a comfortable parliamentary majority.
But the lopsided set-up did not stop enthusiastic voters from turning out across the country, from ethnic Malay Muslims in the Deep South to residents in Thaksin’s hometown of Chiang Mai.
There are 51 million eligible voters and more than seven million first-timers aged 18-25, adding a dash of uncertainty into the count.
”I want to see Thailand become more democratic and inequality eased from society,” said insurance company employee Pattrapong Waschiyapong at a Bangkok polling station.
The palace statement, unprecedented on an election eve in recent history, added further intrigue to a vote that has repeatedly threatened to tip into chaos before a single ballot was cast.
The statement reiterated comments by late king Bhumibol Adulyadej from 1969 calling for people to ”support good people to govern the society and control the bad people” to prevent them from ”creating chaos.”
Vajiralongkorn urged the public to ”remember and be aware” of the remarks of his father, who died in 2016.
