Thais voted Sunday in national elections expected to return Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to office with a huge mandate, his popularity buoyed by his hands-on reaction to the December 26 tsunami disaster.
The country's enfeebled opposition parties all but conceded defeat before the election, telling voters they hoped only to win a minority in parliament capable of staging no-confidence motions. Twenty political parties have put up 2,289 candidates, but only four or five parties are expected to win seats in the 500-member House of Representatives.
An estimated 44.8 million people are eligible to vote at the country's 83,000 polling stations. With voting mandatory, turnout was expected to be high, possibly eclipsing the 69.9 percent in the last general elections four years ago.
The state Election Commission conceded over the weekend that the campaign had been riddled with corruption but that it was hard to catch violators red-handed. An earlier poll estimated that $260 million had been doled out to buy votes, according to <i>The AP</i>.
Streams of people poured out of the capital Bangkok on the eve of the vote, bound for their hometowns to cast ballots. Thaksin, a 55-year-old self-made telecommunications millionaire, has projected the image of a CEO capable of cutting through the country's bureaucracy. The Thai Rak Thai — or Thai Love Thai — party he created has shown ratings as high as 80 percent. The party, which won 248 seats in its 2001 election debut, is aiming to capture more than 350 seats this time.
