Court accepts EC petition for ruling on counting stateless people in House seats distribution
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday accepted a petition from the Election Commission (EC) for a ruling on its decision to count stateless people in the base for House seats distribution.
A source said the court had scheduled March 3 for all judges to individually adjudicate on the matter, and the majority view would be the court’s ruling.
Following mounting criticism and fear that the dispute could affect the legitimacy of the election, the EC resolved on February 14 to seek a ruling from the Constitution Court. The EC is seeking an interpretation on whether the term “Thai citizens” in the charter for calculating the allocation of House seats should include only those with Thai citizenship or whether it also includes stateless people living in the kingdom.
The EC had announced earlier that it had based the distribution of 400 House seats to 77 provinces on the population census of December 31. The EC also said that the same method had been used in previous elections.
But Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam, the government’s legal expert, said that stateless people could not be included in the population census when distributing House seats. He argued that stateless people should not be counted as they cannot vote.
Similar opinions were aired by Somchai Srisutthiyakorn, a former EC commissioner, who warned that the election watchdog would be held responsible if the court later rules that the counting of stateless people was unconstitutional.
A source from the EC Office said the EC has already prepared a contingency plan in case the court ruled that it was wrong for the agency to count stateless people in the base for distribution of 400 House seats to 77 provinces.
In that scenario, four provinces would see their number of House seats drop. They are: Tak, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Samut Sakhon, while four provinces — Udon Thani, Lop Buri, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Pattani — would see their House seats increase.
The source said the EC has instructed the election committees in the eight provinces to draw alternative boundaries of constituencies based on the calculation without stateless people as well.
Without counting stateless people, the total population will be 65,106,481. When that number is divided by 400 constituencies, the base for distribution of one House seat would be 162,766 people, compared to 165,226 per constituency if stateless people are counted, the source explained.
