Thai’s elections vote count in, but no winner yet

Nearly a week after Thailand’s election, the first since the coup of 2014, it remains unclear which party could form a government.

The country’s Election Commission (EC) released the final vote count, showing the pro-military party had won the popular vote.

However, the count has been marred by concerns over voting irregularities and official results are due by 9 May.

Meanwhile, Sunday’s election had been billed as a return to democracy for Thailand. 

But the military was criticized for taking steps to ensure it would remain influential in politics, including appointing all 250 seats in the upper house or senate.

A complicated system of allocating seats in parliaments based on vote share, introduced by the military, means it remains unclear how many seats each party will ultimately have.

In previous Thai elections, the results came through more quickly and clearly.

This time the EC had problems tabulating results from the 350 constituencies. On Sunday there were some crazy figures from a few. 

They also stopped the publishing statistics of the election results, after the numerous inconsistencies were recorded.

The voter turnout announced also seemed far too low at 65%.

The sole international monitoring entity, ANFREL, was also critical to the commission just before and during the elections.

This year’s Thai elections was significant, for it is the country’s bid to democracy since 2014, which the government was ruled by military juntas.