Chadchart confirmed as new Bangkok governor

The EC issued an announcement on its website that it had ratified the victory of Chadchart, making the independent candidate of the Progressive Group the official governor of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. The EC meeting on Tuesday started at 1pm and two hours later, it was resolved to endorse Chadchart's victory.

The EC endorsed five more city councillors on Tuesday after having ratified the victories of 40 councillors on Monday. The election of 50 Bangkok councillors was also held on May 22.


Earlier on Tuesday, it was reported that the 1444 hotline of the EC was flooded with the phone calls to check whether Chadchart’s victory has been ratified.

Callers reportedly flooded the hotline of the EC since Monday when it was initially expected that the election watchdog would ratify his victory.

Chadchart won a record mandate in the May 22 election, securing 1.386 million votes.

According to the Bangkok election committee, Chadchart faced two complaints from social activist Srisuwan Janya. The activist accused the governor-elect of breaking the election law by offering gifts to voters by designing election posters in such a way that they can be recycled into bags and aprons. Srisuwan also accused Chadchart of breaking the election law by attacking the bureaucracy in his campaign speeches.

Before the EC made the announcement endorsing Chardchart’s vitory, Srisuwan had come under heavy criticism from Thai netizens for his post on Tuesday morning ridiculing Bangkok voters who had voted for Chadchart.

“I heard that 1.38 million Bangkokians would cry like babies this afternoon. They will become like millipedes on a pile of ashes. I don’t know whether they will cheer or cry,” Srisuwan said in his Facebook post.

In the announcement, the EC said it had checked and found that it was reasonable to believe the Bangkok governor election was clean and fair so it had resolved to ratify Chadchart’s victory.

The EC explained the delay to the requirement under the law to primarily check whether there were frauds or violations of the election law.

As an independent candidate, Chadchart, who is often referred to as “The Hulk” or the “strongest minister on Earth” by his fans, is clearly popular among voters not just in Bangkok but also upcountry.

Several years ago, a photograph of a barefoot Chardchart carrying bags of food into a temple in Surin province went viral on social media. He said that he had gone for an early morning jog while in Surin for a mobile Cabinet meeting and decided to give alms to monks.

The local resident who snapped a picture of him, barefoot and in a T-shirt and shorts carrying bags of food, nicknamed him “The Hulk”. And the name has stuck.

Chadchart was transport minister in Yingluck Shinawatra’s government from October 27, 2012 to May 22, 2014, when her government was ousted by the military.

Chadchart has a long-standing connection with Bangkok because his father, Pol General Saneh Sittipunt, was once the Metropolitan Police chief.

The politician, who has an elder twin brother and an elder sister, completed his secondary education at Triam Udom Suksa School before doing a bachelor’s with honours in engineering at Chulalongkorn University. He later earned a master’s in business administration from the same university before heading to the world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to get a master’s in public works engineering (structure). He also completed a doctorate in public works engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Chadchart started his career as a structural engineer at a private company before becoming a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Engineering. He then became assistant rector of Chulalongkorn from 2005 to 2012.

As an academic, Chadchart also served as an adviser to the transport minister during Thaksin Shinawatra’s second tenure and then again during Samak Sundaravej’s government. However, he was not given a formal position.

Then in 2012, he was made deputy transport minister of the Yingluck government before rising to the post of transport minister in the same year.

Great triumphs

His recognised achievements include changes to the Bang Sue Grand Station’s blueprint to ensure it could accommodate high-speed trains, and changes to the Red Line electric train system so it had four routes instead of just three. He was also behind the purchase of eight rapid trains from CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Co Ltd, as well as the overhaul of the railway system in the upper North of the country.

Chadchart also had senior Transport Ministry officials ride buses to work and report problems before he took a bus to work to get a first-hand experience of the problems faced by Bangkok commuters.

After the Yingluck government was toppled, he was appointed to the committee for drafting competitiveness strategies, but he quit the panel on October 2, 2017.

As transport minister, Chadchart was noticed for being down-to-earth. He liked taking motorcycle taxis or songtaew minibuses to work. He also often hopped on trains unannounced to check on them.