Changwat, Amphoe, Tambon

Changwat Bua Yai in discussion

2013-05-16T13:00:00.000+02:00

Khun Wisarut from the 2bangkok forum has posted some news about the re-emergence of the plan to split off some part of Nakhon Ratchasima province. Since Khorat is such a big province, both by area (20494 km², the largest of all provinces) and by population, with 2.6 million it is second after Bangkok. And also by the number of districts it would make sense to split off some of the 32 districts to make a new province.

The situation is quite opposite with Ubon Ratchathani - whereas Khorat was never changed since its creation as Boriwen Nakhon Ratchasima in 1899 [Gazette], Ubon Ratchathani was split twice.

Amnat Charoen in 1993 [Gazette]
Yasothon in 1972 [Gazette]

Without these changes, Ubon would be larger than Khorat both by area and by population. Of course there were plans to split off parts of Khorat in past, the one most advanced was the 1955 plan to split off Bua Yai and Phutthaisong from Buriram to make a new province to be named Pathom Thong, which however was halted after the 1957 coup. The latest attempt was now started by Phuea Thai MP Koson Patthama (นายโกศล ปัทมะ) from Nakhon Ratchasima constituency 5, which includes Bua Yai district. There is however a significant opposition to this plan, most significantly by local patriots who worry about the unity of their historical heritage. To get an idea of whether this plan would make sense or not it would be great to have a scientific study on the effects creation of Amnat Charoen province, but at least in English there seem to be nothing like that.

A one-hour TV discussion was uploaded to YouTube, but my Thai is way to bad to follow any of it.

The new province is supposed to include eight districts, all of them were originally part of the district Bua Yai (อำเภอบัวใหญ่).

1939: Khong (อำเภอคง) split from Bua Yai [Gazette].
1957: Prathai (อำเภอประทาย) split from Bua Yai [Gazette].
1961: Non Daeng (อำเภอโนนแดง) was split from Prathai [Gazette].
1976: Ban Lueam (อำเภอบ้านเหลื่อม) split from Khong [Gazette].
1986: Kaeng Sanam Nang (อำเภอแก้งสนามนาง) split from Bua Yai [Gazette]
1997: Bua Lai (อำเภอบัวลาย, Gazette) and Sida (อำเภอสีดา, Gazette) were split from Bua Yai.

The province Bua Yai (จังหวัดบัวใหญ่) would cover 2149 km² (10.5% of the whole province) and 375,000 citizen (14% of whole province). It would thus fit with the conditions for creating a new province - but not sure if there would be a consensus of the population to establish this province.

New minor district due to a white elephant?

2013-04-26T13:05:00.004+02:00

In Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi province, a white elephant was observed in a group of elephants at a water hole. Given the symbolic importance of white elephants in all of South East Asia, this would be big news in Thailand especially once the observation is confirmed - there's still the chance that the elephant bathed in light colored mud before and thus only looked as having a very lightly colored skin. But to my surprise this could even have implication to the administrative units.

เมื่อวันที่ 25 เม.ย. นายมณเทียร ทองนิตย์ ผวจ.เพชรบุรี เปิดเผยว่า ได้สั่งการให้ นายขจรศักดิ์ สมบูรณ์ นอภ.แก่งกระจาน จ.เพชรบุรี ไปตรวจสอบข้อมูลต่างๆถึงความเป็นไปได้ในการจัดตั้งเป็นกิ่งอำเภอป่าเด็ง เพื่อดูแลช้างป่าเป็นพิเศษ และยังสามารถให้บริการประชาชนได้อย่างใกล้ชิดและทั่วถึง [...]
On April 25, Monthian Thongnit, province governor of Phetchaburi told that he ordered Khachorasak Sombun, district officer of Kaeng Krachan to check the information reaching to the creation of minor district Pa Daeng to look after the elephant forest as a special case while still service the citizen closely and thoroughly.
(Source: "ร้องตรวจสอบ หลังเผยภาพลับแท้จริงเป็นช้างเผือกหรือช้างคลุกฝุ่น", DailyNews, April 25 2013)

If the news article is correctly quoting the administrative change suggested, the new minor district would consist of just one subdistrict. Pa Daeng subdistrict has a population of 5402 (as of 2012), covers 273.568 km² (170,980 rai) and consists of 9 administrative villages. The subdistrict was created in 1988 by splitting 4 Muban from Song Phi Nong subdistrict [Gazette]. With just one subdistrict, it would be of course a very small district, though there are still two other districts having a lower population number. By area, it would be middle-sized, but that's obviously due to the large unpopulated forest areas of the subdistrict which make up the national park.

Streetview Thailand update

2013-04-24T13:00:00.000+02:00

Pattaya city hall on Streetview

Yesterday, Google enlarged the coverage by StreetView in Thailand for the second time, apparently they seem to do around every six month as the previous one was in October last year. While sadly they still haven't added anything for the South since the initial version, the central area around Bangkok is now covered even better. Chonburi province is now completely added, including Pattaya of course, Ayutthaya and Suphanburi, which were partially done in the previous update, are now more-or-less complete as well, more parts of Ratchaburi and Kanchanaburi were added. In the North, now a good part of both Lampang and Lamphun province were added.

And Google hasn't stopped to collect data, right now the cars are underway in several provinces - too bad still no Ko Samui or other parts of Surat Thani.

Chachoengsao - Khlong Khiao, Bang Khla, Bang Nam Priao, Ban Pho, Mueang districts (the whole western part of the province, as Bang Pa Kong is already online)
Prachinburi - Ban Sang district
Singburi - Inburi and Mueang districts
Chiang Mai - Mae Chaen district
Mae Hong Son - Pang Mapha, Pai district

If I weren't busy with other things, it'd be fun to "drive" through the newly added areas of Thailand from my desk, collecting or verifying the coordinates of the local administration offices.

Local elections this year

2013-04-22T13:00:00.000+02:00

Two months ago I completed the election data for the years 2009 to 2012, so that for every local government unit I already had at least one council term in my XML files. Two months later, I now finished another year, the elections taking place in 2009 and thus ending this year - another 3722 data points. I have already started the final complete list I found at the Election Commission with the elections which took place in 2004 and ending their term in 2008 - thus most of those which had their latest election last year. Those are another 3135 data points, but working through those may be a bit faster since back in 2008 there much less local administrations which had their mayor and council term out of sync.

I also found a source for the official election endorsements at the Election Commission, many PDF files which list the winning mayor and council candidates, both for the main election as well as for by-elections. Though only maybe half of the provinces are found in that collection, and it also just goes back till the spring of 2012, it also made it possible to add a lot of data to the XMLs.

Those sources combined made it possible to notice that the yearly tables for the Election Commission cannot be trusted fully - especially for the council sizes there are changes which cannot be explained. It seems that in the older table for several TAO simply the number of Muban in the Tambon was used to calculate the council size, ignoring the fact that some of the Muban may be completely within a municipality and thus not eligible to elect councilors to the TAO. But since Muban can also be shared between municipality and TAO, it may even be possible that the Muban area under jurisdiction of the TAO has no citizen. I now have 65 cases where the council seemed to have changed, but I could no verify whether it really changed or one of the numbers is simply wrong.

Finally, thanks to the online archive of the +Phuket Gazette, I was able to reconstruct the election history for this one province since the turn of the century, including the very interesting case of Pa Tong municipality which had three election within few months - the first and second election after its upgrade to a town in 2002 were nulled due to election fraud.

I have to hurry to work through the 2008 data, because soon the municipal upgrades will begin - with around 3249 TAO having either (or both) a mayor or council term end this year, several will get upgraded to municipalities. So far only few upgrades were decided and documented in the board meeting transcripts, but to be effective in September when most of the terms end I soon have to focus on those as well.

Population statistics 2012 available

2013-04-12T13:00:00.000+02:00

End of March, the official population numbers as of December 31 2012 were published in the Royal Gazette, listed for each province. According to this announcement, the Kingdom has a population of 64,456,695 - 32,700,727 men and 32,755,968 women.

More detailled is the population statistics which is available at the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA), which goes down to subdistrict level and also separated municipal and non-municipal data. I have written down a guide on how to read these data earlier on the blog. The full 2012 data is now also available - with the usual caveat that this data relies on the registration data, but quite a lot of Thai don't renew their registration when they move to a different province, so especially the numbers for Bangkok are probably much lower than the real population.

A little picks from the data

The population for the whole country increased by 380,662, which means an increase by 0.59%.
The province which had the largest population increase was Chonburi, which gained 25,346 citizen. By percentage however, Pathum Thani was the biggest winner with a 2.27% increase.
Tak lost 4,973 citizen, which also made it the biggest looser by percentage with a 0.94% loss.
At district level, Mueang Samut Prakan district had the largest increase by number (7,556), whereas Bang Yai in Pathum Thani the largest by percentage (4.46%).
At subdistrict level, the largest increase by percentage was on Ko Tao (25.21%), the largest decrease in Mae Sot (-12.49%)

Usually the population data contains some new municipalities as well, however by far not all of the municipalities created lately are listed with the data - and also those municipalities added were already created four years ago. One reason for this is obviously that in many provinces the TIS:1099 codes at district level are all used and its no longer possible to assign such a number to a the new municipalities.

Khon Kaen: Muang Wan (เทศบาลตำบลม่วงหวาน) and Nong Tum (เทศบาลตำบลหนองตูม) were added.
Roi Et: Niwet (เทศบาลตำบลนิเวศน์) and Ma-ue (เทศบาลตำบลมะอึ) were added.
Songkhla: Thung Lan (เทศบาลตำบลทุ่งลาน) added.

Municipal boundary adjustment in Phayao

2013-04-10T13:00:00.000+02:00

Since I was quite busy with other tasks, I haven't yet reported the Royal Gazette announcement published last week. The subdistrict municipality Ban Tam (เทศบาลตำบลบ้านต๊ำ) in Mueang Phayao district [Gazette]. The adjustment is related to the earlier announced area change of two further municipalities, as all three subdistricts had their boundaries changed last year.

In contrast to Ban Mai and Tha Champi, in Ban Tam it had an elected council and mayor since 2009, whereas the other two municipalities had to wait almost three years until being able to hold the first election as a municipality. The only difference between them was that Ban Tam was already upgraded in July 2008, while the other two were upgraded in October 2009. Apparently the subdistrict area change was planned sometime in 2009 but took three years to be finalized, and the Election Commission delayed the elections all that time. The term of the council and mayor of Ban Tam ended in January this year and the new election was just yesterday - thus there were more than 45 days between the end of term and the election, so here the Election Commission had delayed the election a bit as well. New constituencies for the municipality were announced in beginning of March, the election was thus approximately one month after the constituencies were approved.

Municipal announcements

2013-03-28T13:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the rename of two municipalities was announced in the Royal Gazette.

Tha Nam Oi (เทศบาลตำบลท่าน้ำอ้อย), Phayuha Khiri district, Nakhon Sawan province, renamed to Tha Nam Oi Muang Hak (เทศบาลตำบลท่าน้ำอ้อยม่วงหัก) [Gazette]. The municipality covers both of the subdistricts Tha Nam Oi and Muang Hak, but so far only one of the subdistricts was represented in its name.
Ban Dan (เทศบาลตำบลบ้านด่าน), Phayuha Khiri district, Ubon Ratchathani province, renamed to Ban Dan Khon Chiam (เทศบาลตำบลบ้านด่านโขงเจียม) [Gazette]. The municipality covers parts of the subdistrict Khong Chiam, which was previously not represented in its name.

Both name changes were effective February 25, and were both discussed in the board meeting on December 26 2012. Strangly, apparently neither of them was approved by the board to consider name changes - at least the above linked meeting transcript does not mention it, nor did the announcements itself mention in which meeting the name change was approved.

I haven't yet had the time to write up on two further municipal announcements from last Friday, changes in the boundaries of municipalities and TAO.

Sai Noi (เทศบาลตำบลไทรน้อย), Sai Noi district, Nonthaburi province, gets enlarged by parts of Mu 1 of TAO Khlong Khwang (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลคลองขวาง) and parts of Mu 5 of TAO Sai Noi (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลไทรน้อย). The announcement is done in three parts, one for each local administrative unit affected [Thesaban, TAO Khlong Khwang, TAO Sai Noi]. Not sure of after the change those two Muban belong completely to the municipality - in that case it'd be interesting to know what happens with the elected councilors from these villages, are they allowed to stay in the council till their term ends, or do they have to vacate the no longer available seats directly?
Chao Phraya Surasak (เทศบาลตำบลเจ้าพระยาสุรศักดิ์), Si Racha district, Chonburi province [Gazette]. There is however no corresponding announcement for any other local government unit with which area was swapped, and the latest boundary definition dates back to 1991, when the municipality was still the sanity district Ao Udom (สุขาภิบาลอ่าวอุดม). But the announcement from 1991, unlike most other area change announcements for sanitary districts, does not include a map.So this could also be just a new definition to clear up any inconsistencies or not fully clear definitions.

Municipal boundary adjustments

2013-03-15T13:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, four announcements were published in the Royal Gazette, adjusting the boundaries of municipalities and TAO in two provinces.

Subdistrict municipality Mae Phrik (เทศบาลตำบลแม่พริก), Mae Phrik district, Lampang province and the TAO Mae Phrik (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลแม่พริก). The announcement was done in two parts [Thesaban, TAO], and as usual only the announcement for the municipality includes a map. The previous municipal boundary dates back to the creation of the sanitary district Mae Phrik in 1956 [Gazette]. Comparing the two maps, the area of the municipality was enlarged significantly, adding area to the north and even more area to the south of the original municipality area. An interesting question would be whether there will now be early elections for the councils and mayor of the two local governments - the terms for the TAO will end in December 2013, the terms for the municipality in January 2014. At least for the municipality, first the Election Commission has to draw new constituency boundaries, the ones from 2004 are now of course obsolete.
Subdistrict municipality Ban Mai (เทศบาลตำบลบ้านใหม่, Gazette), Mueang Phayao district, Phayao province and subdistrict municipality Tha Champhi (เทศบาลตำบลท่าจำปี, Gazette). Both municipalities cover the whole same-named subdistrict - both were upgraded from being a TAO in 2009. Since Ban Mai is located directly north of Tha Champhi. Thus this announcement correlates with a change of subdistrict boundaries in 2012 [Gazette] - which mentions Ban Mai, Tha Champi and Ban Tam. maybe for the municipality Ban Tam there'll be a similar announcement forthcoming. Interestingly, both Ban Mai and Tha Champhi had their first local election as a municipality on February 21 this year, 1302 days after the last TAO council term had ended. Apparently the Election Commission waited with drawing the constituencies until this boundary issue was settled, the constituencies were announced in the Royal Gazette last November (Ban Mai, Tha Champi). More than three years without an elected local government is a very long time the government-installed municipal clerk (Palat Thesaban, ปลัดเทศบาล) could manage the municipality completely alone.

Changing TAO council sizes

2013-02-27T13:00:00.000+01:00

The size of the council of a subdistrict administrative organization (TAO) varies a lot, because every administrative village within the TAO has two elected councilors. Only in case there are less than three villages, the number of councilors per Muban is higher since the minimum size of the council is six. Thus there are TAO councils between six and more than 50 members. But not only the size of each TAO council differs, also the size of one TAO council can change - whenever a new administrative village is created, the council will be enlarged by two seats. The councilors from the village which is split are assigned to that part village in which they live, so its no necessarily the seats from the new village which will be filled in the by-election.

Now I add the council term ends in this year and thus the election dates for 2009, I stumble over several cases where the council size has changed between the 2005 and 2009 election. In those cases where I know that a new village was created during the term that change is easily explained - one example can be the TAO Chae Chang (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลแช่ช้าง) in San Kamphaeng district of Chiang Main province. In 2005 the council had 14 members, in 2009 it had 16 members. Today, the subdistrict contains 10 administrative villages - thus at first one would expect 20 TAO members. But village 7 is completely covered by the municipality San Kamphaeng and thus is not eligible to send councilors to the TAO council, and for village 8 the area which belongs to the TAO is unpopulated, only for Mu 6 one part of the population belongs to the municipality and another to the TAO - so effectively there are eight Muban for the TAO. And since village 10 was created in 2006 there must have been a by-election to enlarge the council shortly after the new Muban became effective.

This way I could already explain a big number of the council size changes, but sadly no all. Even though those files from where I copy my data are published by the Election Commission, they obviously contain wrong data - for example for the TAO Don Du (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลดอนดู่) in Khon Kaen province, according to the EC tables the council had a size of 18 in 2005 and 24 in 2009. But - the subdistrict has 12 villages and no area shared with any municipality, and already in 2002 it had 11 villages. Only one village was added in 2006, so the number for 2005 must have been 22, not 18. There were even a few cases where instead of the number of seats the table showed the number of constituencies (i.e. of Muban). In other cases, there were smaller councils in 2005, and in 2009 the council had two members for every Muban - but part of the subdistrict belongs to a municipality, and there were no boundary changes between TAO and municipality as far as I knew. So I have no idea why those Muban were eligible to have councilors in 2009, but not in 2005.

Apparently, the Excel sheets and PDFs from the ECT were created manually, otherwise such obvious mistakes could not happen. If I could spend more time on the programming part of my data collection project, I would easily have a small tool which could output the same tables from my collected data. But then there's still the problem that I don't have the full source data, I can only reconstruct them from those files I have. Especially whenever a mayor or a council ends its term prematurely I would have to update the data in the XML directly - but I rarely find these information at the ECT provincial websites.

Local government terms 2009-2012

2013-02-20T13:03:00.000+01:00

The task which kept me busy the last months was to add election data to my XML files reached a first milestone. On the website of the Election Commission, I originally found an Excel sheet with all the term ends of the local government councils and mayors in 2012, and after some more searching another Excel file for 2009 and two PDFs for 2010 and 2011. Since those files cover the last four years, in principle I should now have data for every local government unit. But actually, a few are still without - those which ended their term in 2008, but had the next election in 2009 are missing, especially the TAO upgraded to municipalities in 2008. Nevertheless an impressive number of local government units:

Year	TAO	Thesaban	PAO
2012	2201	838	76
2011	550	333	3
2010	75	210	1
2009	3589	237	1

An example entry in the XML, taken from the subdistrict municipality Khlong Cha-un in Surat Thani, looks like this

<council>
  <term begin="2012-12-16" type="ThesabanTambon" size="12" />
  <term begin="2008-11-09" end="2012-11-08" type="ThesabanTambon" size="12" />
  <term begin="2004-07-25" end="2008-06-30" type="TAO" size="26" endreason="StatusChange" />

</council>

Notice that the last term as a TAO ended about one month before the nominal end of term because the upgrade was effective a little earlier than in most cases - normally the upgrade happens on the day after the term ended. Such cases of prematurely ended terms are the most interesting ones, and will write up some articles on some types of premature ends - the end due to a status change is the least interesting one.

And I am not yet done with this huge task of adding term data, in the meantime the term ends in this year were published as a PDF, and I also found another PDF with the data for 2008. This year there will be a total of 3596 term ends, again a lot of TAO end their term since it is 4th four year period since 1997 when 3637 TAO were created. And again a significant number of these I expect to be upgraded to municipalities this year.

Elections in the 1950s

2013-02-18T13:04:00.003+01:00

The book Village life in modern Thailand by John E. DeYoung is a very interesting description of the rural life in Thailand in the 1950s - which at the time of writing the book was the "modern time". A few sections also mention the relationship of the villages to the authorities, like the following on the national election.

A few weeks before an election each district officer instructs the headmen of his village and communes to encourage their villagers to vote; the headmen assemble the villagers, urge them to vote, instruct those who have never voted in how to cast a ballot, and assign a registration number to each person eligible to vote. A registration list is sent by the headman to the local polling place (which is often the nearest primary school), and watchers and checkers are appointed for the polls. On the day before the elections the headman sends his assistant to all households to remind them that the election will take place on the morrow. Thus, even though the villager sees, hears, or reads nothing of the candidates, he is constantly reminded of the election during the several weeks preceding it.

In 1949, in a by-election for assemblyman, 49 per cent of those eligible voted in the village of San Pong — 72 per cent of the eligible males and 25 per cent of the eligible females. None of the candidates visited the village, no campaign literature was distributed, and since they do not read newspapers, few of the villagers had any clear idea of the campaign issues. The villagers made their choice partly on the basis of what the headman and the schoolteacher said about the candidates, partly on the basis of the nearness of the candidate's home town. A man from the closest town, even though he was personally unknown to the villagers, was regarded as a "local" man, a consideration which made him a better choice in the eyes of the villagers than his rivals from more distant parts of the province.

Eligibility to vote consists simply in being older than twenty-one. Since so many adult villagers are illiterate, a technique has been devised to allow those who cannot read and write to vote. Each candidate is assigned a number. These numbers are printed in Thai numerals and also in large dots on perforated paper. When the voter comes to the polls he is told which number corresponds to which candidate; he enters the voting booth, tears off the piece of the ballot which contains the number of dots for his choice, seals this inside an official envelope which is given to him when his name is checked on the registration list by the polling inspectors, and drops it in the ballot box. For his vote to be valid the envelope must be sealed, for Thailand voters enjoy the privilege of secret ballot. [...]

I'll post some more quotes from this book later with other sections on the local administration. The whole book is also available at archive.org, apparently already out of copyright. Despite being available online, I have got myself an antiquarian copy - reading it in paper is more comfortable...

Graphical license plate for Phetchaburi

2013-02-15T13:04:00.001+01:00

Today, a new graphical car license plate was announced for Phetchaburi province [Gazette], replacing the design originally announced in 2005 [Gazette].

2013

2005

Comparing the two design, one can easily find the new elements. In the background is Phra Nakhon Khiri with the fireworks of the annual festival, held in the beginning of April. Also new are the two Garuda figures, though I don't know how these are special for this province. The flowers, fruits and the local sweets have been moved together to the left side - the palm trees as the source of the palm sugar as the main ingredient for these sweets are now much smaller and spread in the background.

Local political crimes

2013-02-04T13:02:00.000+01:00

Probably the biggest news last week was the arrest of Somchai Khunpluem (สมชาย คุณปลื้ม), better known as Kamnan Poh, who was on the run for eight years. As his nickname suggest, he was subdistrict headmen from 1968 till 1989 in Saen Suk subdistrict, Mueang Chonburi district. 1989 he became the first mayor of Saen Suk subdistrict municipality, which was upgraded from a sanitary district in that year. He stayed in office till 2005, when he fled the country facing arrest for the 2003 murder of another subdistricht headman.

However the legal problems of Kamnan Poh haven't affected the political influence of the Khunpluem family - one of his sons is chairman of the Chonburi PAO, another the mayor of the city of Pattaya. And also Saen Suk municipality is still led by a Khunpluem family member. Thus it is no wonder that some analysists claim that his arrest now was the result of loosing protection from influential figures - Bangkok Pundit has a summary of the most likely theories.

Coincidentally, just one week before this arrest, another political murder led to the arrest of an important local politician. Last November, the mayor of Songkhla municipality, Peera Tantiserani (พีระ ตันติเศรณี), was fatally shot. A political reason for this murder was suspected right away, and now Uthit Chuchuay (อุทิศ ชูช่วย), the chairman of the Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO) Songkhla was arrested as being one of the masterminds behind the murder. Another local politician is apparently also involved, the mayor of TAO Tabon in Ranot district. As usual, the case is around an infrastructure project which probably would have gained the suspected plotters some additional income - a cable car crossing the mouth of Songkhla lake. Peera was a strong opponent of this project due to its ecological impact on the remaining forest in the municipal area.

Bangkok governor candidates

2013-01-22T13:27:00.001+01:00

Yesterday the official candidate registration of the gubernatorial elections in Bangkok has started, and already on the first day 18 candidates have registered. Since 16 have registered directly at the start of the registration period, the numbers on the ballots for them were drawn in a lottery, whereas the remaining two got the number in order of their registration. The registration period end on Friday, so a few more candidates may get added to the list.

Only two of the 18 candidates run under a party label, and its probably one of these two who will win the election - incumbent M.L. Sukhumbhand Paribatra (ม.ร.ว.สุขุมพันธ์ บริพัตร) running for the Democrat Party with the number 16, and Pongsapat Pongcharoen (พล.ต.อ.พงศพัศ พงษ์เจริญ) for Phue Thai with number 9. From the polls posted by BKK Mango it looks like an open race between them. For those able to read Thai, Richard Barrow has also collected the social web pages for the major candidates.

Whereas in most local elections there are usually only two or three candidates, and sometimes even just a single candidate without any competitor, the number of candidates for the Bangkok governor is always much higher - both due to the larger electorate and thus also the larger number of eligibly candidates, but also due to the much larger media coverage even for those candidates who never have a chance to win. As far as I was able to find, in the recent BKK gubernatorial elections there were always more than 15 candidates.

2013: 18+
2009: 14 (Wikipedia)
2008: 16 (Wikipedia)
2004: 23 (Wikipedia)
2000: 23 (Manager)
1996: 29 (Manager)

License plate graphic for Kanchanaburi

2013-01-16T13:00:00.000+01:00

Yet another updated graphical car license plate, this time for the province of Kanchanaburi announced in the Royal Gazette last Friday.

2013

The symbolism of the graphic is clear - Kanchanaburi is a popular province for tourists and all of the items found in the graphic are well-known attractions in the province.Most prominently is the railway bridge of the River Kwae (The Bridge on the River Kwai) to the left. Below the bridge is one of the river restaurants, which are found a lot in Kanchanaburi town. To the right are the Three Pagodas found at the boundary to Myanmar at the Three Pagodas Pass. The waterfall below is the Sai Yok waterfall. The setting sun in the middle refers to the location of the province in the west of Thailand - the Thai word for "west" translates as "where the sun sets".


2006

The design announced in 2006 [Gazette] also shows the bridge and the pagodas, and I assume the somewhat strange looking water at the left border is again the Sai Yok waterfall.

Local government elections this year

2013-01-10T13:00:00.000+01:00

Finally I have found the page within the Election Commission website where they place the links to the most important reference lists. There is has the full results for the last three parliament elections, the latest senate election, and also the lists of the local government term ends starting in 2009. These lists keep me busy for some time already, extracting the election dates from there and adding them into the XML files.

Thus I now also have the list of all the term ends in this year, the actual election date for each of the local government unit will be chosen by the Election Commission when it reaches its term end. But since each term is exactly four years, this table now enables me the get the election dates in 2009. However, one big drawback is that the list is a PDF file, whereas for 2012 and 2009 there were Excel sheets. I was able to convert the PDF back to a Excel, but all of the vocals and other letters below or above the consonants were lost in the process, making it somewhat more difficult to work through the list.

Most of the 115 pages of the PDF are this list, but there are a few statistics at the beginning of the document as well worth mentioning here. This year, terms will end for the mayor and/or the council in 3596 local governments.

5 Provincial Administrative Organizations (only mayors)
341 municipalities
3249 TAO

And while the municipal elections are spread all over the year, September will see 2941 TAO ending their terms. Thus there will be a lot of local elections in October, but probably also again quite some number of TAO upgraded to municipalities which is normally done with the term ends. Also interesting - in 105 TAO and 21 municipalities the mayor and the council have different term ends, mostly caused by mayors who did not complete their term.

New car license plate graphic for Khon Kaen

2013-01-09T13:52:00.003+01:00

I still haven't yet written the article on the remaining three new license plate graphics published on Christmas, now another graphic was announced, this time for Khon Kaen. It is in fact already the third design for Khon Kaen, changed every four years.

2013

The new design [Gazette] shows at top two branches of the Yellow Shower Tree (ราชพฤกษ์, Ratchaphruek), the symbol tree of the province. The stupa to the left is Phra That Kham Kaen, which is also the main item on the seal of the province. I am not sure about the symbolism of the tree trunk in middle, I only know that the provincial seal features two trees to either side of the stupa - but there is a similar looking trunk in front of the railway station of Khon Kaen. At both sides there is a yellow cartoon dinosaur, one holding a khene and the other doing a Thai greeting.

2010

The 2010 design [Gazette] is similar, but instead of the two small cartoon dinosaurs a real dinosaur is depicted, probably the Phuwiangosaurus sirindhornae which was discovered in Phu Wiang district.

2004

Finally, the 2004 design [Gazette] lacks the stupa and places the dinosaur much more into the background. For me, it is the visually least appealing design, but that's of course just my subjective impression.

Bangkok governor resigns

2013-01-08T13:00:00.000+01:00

At first look, it sounds like a nonsensical act - Bangkok governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra has resigned from his post today, to take effect tomorrow just one day before his term would have ended nominally on Thursday. However, this one day will have a bigger consequence for the forthcoming election. In case a governor fulfills his term, the next election has to take place within 45 days after the end of term. However, in case of an early resignation, the election has to take place within 60 days after the resignation - which makes sense to give the Election Commission enough time to prepare the elections to do those preparative steps which could be done in the last days of the nominal term otherwise. But since it is just one day this time, those preparations should be done already and the Election Commission could still choose the original scheduled election day. However it seems

If incumbent Governor Sukkhumbhand Paribatra resigns before completing his term on Friday, the gubernatorial race will take place on March 3 - but if he completes his term, the election will be held on February 17.
The Nation, Ten challenges for next city governor, 2012-01-07

According to Bangkok Post, adding two or three weeks to the election campaign is labeled to increase fairness in the election.

MR Sukhumbhand wanted his resignation to take effect before Jan 10 to allow fair compeition (sic!) in the Bangkok governor election, he said.
Bangkok Post, Sukhumbhand to resign Tuesday, 2012-01-07

There is however one big cloud over the re-election bid of MR Sukhumbhand, who is now facing investigations by the DSI over the extension of the contract with the company operating the Skytrain. Its a kind of deja vu - four years ago Sukhumbhand predecessor Apirak Kosayodhin resigned just one month after being reelected, also due to corruption charges. It will certainly be an interesting campaign.

A very interesting read in preparation to the campaign is the opinion published by Bangkok Post shortly after Christmas.

Bangkok governor, what is the job - other than keeping pet dogs out of public parks and collecting garbage and dumping it in Nakhon Pathom province?
[...]
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration Act, BE 2528 outlines the power and role of the Bangkok governor, but other than hiring and firing city officials, everything else is vague and overlaps with the functions of the national government.
[...]
When functions are overlapped, budgets are overlapped and very little gets done, but a lot of people get to eat the cake. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the individual governors, but it is a problem of the definition, the status of Bangkok.
Bangkok Post, Bangkok governor, it's an insane job, 2012-12-27

New sister city for Bangkok

2013-01-07T13:00:00.000+01:00

On January 4th, Bangkok governor Sukhumbhand signed a contract with the mayor of the Cambodian capital city Phnom Penh to make the two cities sister cities.

Phnom Penh is the 24th city to team-up with Bangkok. The capital's other twin cities include Washington DC, Beijing, Moscow, St Petersburg, Budapest, Brisbane, Manila, Seoul, Jakarta, Vientiane, Tehran and Shanghai.
The Nation, Phnom Penh, Bangkok now twin cities, 2012-01-05

When I last wrote about the sister cities of Bangkok, the Wikipedia article had totally bogus entries, and there was only a outdated list on the website of the city administration listing just 14 sister cities. When rechecking now, Wikipedia had the list of 22 sister cities same as the website of Bangkok - and someone already added Phnom Penh as well. Since The Nation had a partial list in their article as quoted above, it seems the missing city is Tehran, the capital of Iran. I wasn't able to find any other reference confirming that relationship, and have become somewhat skeptical in believing that newspaper.

First Royal Gazette announcements for 2013

2013-01-04T13:47:00.003+01:00

Today the first announcements relevant to the administrative subdivisions were published in the Royal Gazette, and since last year had a lot of newly created municipalities these announcements are definitions of the constituency boundaries within municipalities. Due to the larger number of these announcements I normally don't write about them, thus this is a nice chance to mention them.

Ban Thaen (เทศบาลตำบลบ้านแท่น), Ban Thaen district, Chaiyaphum [Gazette]. The term of the municipality council will end on February 21 this year, so the change of constituencies comes in time to allow the election to take place within the 45 days after the end of term.
Phra Sadet (เทศบาลตำบลพระเสด็จ), Lap Lae district, Uttaradit [Gazette]. The TAO Thung Yang was upgraded to a municipality effective August 24 (and renamed to Phra Sadet since part of the subdistrict Thung Yang already forms the municipality Thung Yang), so now the constituencies are defined the first municipal election can take place.
Huai Sai (เทศบาลตำบลห้วยทราย), San Kamphaeng district, Chiang Mai [Gazette]. The TAO Huai Sai was upgraded to a municipality effective November 1st, cutting short the council term which would have run until September this year. In this case the time without an elected administration will be shorter than for Phra Sadet.

License plate background for Bueng Kan

2012-12-27T13:00:00.000+01:00

Over the Christmas days, the Royal Gazette continued to publish announcements since these days are no holidays in Thailand. On the 25th, four announcements of provincial graphical license plates for passenger cars were published, among them the license plate for the latest province Bueng Kan created in 2011.

The graphic shows the same elements already present on the provincial seal - Phu Tok hill, the abundant water in the province, most notably the Mekong river, and the forests. Especially if comparing with the colored province seal, the similarity of the two artworks becomes obvious.

The other three provinces which get a new license plate are Satun, Kamphaeng Phet and Loei. I will write up a separate blogpost on them in the next days, but for those who cannot wait can find the graphic already in the web album.

Times between local elections

2012-12-20T13:00:00.000+01:00

As I am now adding lots of local election details into my XML, it now becomes possible to do some automatic calculation of election statistics. Though I am far from having a full coverage of the local elections of the most recent past - right now I have 4775 council elections with at least the election date - a few quite interesting things show up.

At first, most of the local election take place on either Sunday (4244 or 89%) or Saturday (410 or 9%), but there were also election on every other weekday. But it gets more interesting when I have more than one election date for a given local council, as then it is possible to calculate the time between the end of term and the election of a new council. By law, after the end of term the next election has to take place within 45 days, however this can be extended by the Election Commission. This takes place especially when the constituencies of the election need to be changed, either because the size of the council has changed, or the population numbers within the constituencies have changed significantly.

The number of days without a council within the limited data I have so far differs from 31 days, e.g. for Chiang Mai municipality earlier this year, when it had the election on April 8, exactly one month after the term ended on March 8. Quite striking however is the longest time I have spotted so far, more than once year for Pho Sadet municipality in Nakhon Si Thammarat. The TAO Pho Sadet was upgraded to a municipality effective October 7 2011, the first day after the TAO council term had expired. However, the first election for the municipal council and municipal mayor took place on November 11 2012, more than one year after the upgrade. For whatever reason, it took so long to split the area of the subdistrict into two constituencies with roughly equal population, as the constituencies were officially announced on October 10 2012, just shortly before the election date.

Right now, the median value of interregnum lengths is 52 days, however this is mostly a selection effect since I have mostly the election data for TAO upgraded to Thesaban - as soon as I add more of the recent TAO elections the number will certainly go down. But since it such a big pile of data to work through, and only part of it as handy Excel sheets which I can convert to XML code easily. In order to show how the data is represented in the XML, below is the code for the Pho Sadet council elections, snipped to show only the most relevant parts.

<entity type="Tambon" name="โพธิ์เสด็จ" english="Pho Sadet" geocode="800118">
<office type="MunicipalityOffice">
[...]
<officials>
<official title="Mayor" name="เกรียงศักดิ์ ด่านคงรักษ์" begin="2012-11-11" beginreason="ElectedDirectly" />
<official title="TAOMayor" name="เกรียงศักดิ์ ด่านคงรักษ์" begin="2007-10-07" end="2011-10-06" beginreason="ElectedDirectly" endreason="EndOfTerm" /></officials>
<council>
<term begin="2012-11-11" type="ThesabanTambon" size="12" comment="Constituencies took 1 year to finish" />
<term begin="2007-10-07" end="2011-10-06" type="TAO" size="18" />
</council>
</office>
[...]
</entity>

Dissolved PAO councils

2012-12-13T13:00:00.000+01:00

When I wrote about the 2004 elections for the Provincial Administrative Organizations (PAO) councils and chairmen, I mentioned that for Buriram the election did take place some months earlier, but couldn't explain that in detail. Now while trying to follow the PAO elections this year and compiling information on the previous elections, I could finally make more sense out of it.

The first elections for the Provincial Administrative Organizations (PAO) under the 1997 PAO act took place on February 5 2000 in all provinces - already except Buriram which had that election on September 7 1999. Another four year before, there were elections for PAO councils on December 24, though these were still PAO as defined by the Provincial Administration act. When the 1997 PAO act came into effect, these councils were converted into the new style PAO without a new election, so all of the council ended their term December 23 1999. All except Buriram, because that PAO council was the first one which was dissolved before its nominal end of term and then had early elections.

With a list of local governments ending their terms in 2008 I was able to reconstruct all the PAO election dates in 2004 - only Buriram and Kanchanaburi were missing in that table. Buriram had its election already on December 14 2003, but for Kanchanaburi I was able to find that there were elections on March 14 2004 and then again on February 2 2008, thus before the end of the four year term. It took me some time on Google to find an old news report explaining this odditiy - the council was dissolved on September 10 2007, but for whatever reason the election did not take place within the normal 60 days after the dissolution.

This year the PAO elections have been spread over the whole year thanks to the Election Commissions of some provinces taking long time to prepare new constituency definitions - if I am not mistaken Samut Prakan and Kanchanaburi even have no scheduled election date yet nor have their constituencies announced. This makes it much more complicate to follow than with one or two election dates, so I almost missed the third case of a dissolved council. The PAO of Surat Thani was elected on April 20 2008, and had its election this year on June 24, only slightly after the 45 days which would have been the deadline after a normal term end. However, it turned out that in fact the council was dissolved on December 16 2011, and it took six months to have the election due to the need of new constituencies boundaries - the council was enlarged from 30 to 36 seats because of the population in the province surpassing 100,000 since 2010.

I haven't yet read the PAO act to check what are the reasons why a council can be dissolved, but from what I found in the reports on the three cases mentioned above it seems that the dissolution was caused by the council not being able to agree on a budget.

Changwat Krung Thep

2012-12-06T13:17:00.000+01:00

Driving the Nonthaburi-Bangkok road, I spotted a very strange sign at the boundary between Nonthaburi and Bangkok. Sadly there was no chance to stop as the road is currently very narrow due to the construction of the Pink Line Skytrain which once finished will connect Nonthaburi with Bangkok very conveniently, so I could not take a photo at that time, and haven't yet returned to Bangkok yet. But luckily now Google Streetview comes to my rescue to proof I wasn't imagining things, and having something to show with this post.

The sign reads "Khet Changwat Krung Thep", and had a second similar sign below it I could not read fast enough. The strange thing - Bangkok is not a Changwat, like I have written about that Bueng Kan is the 76th province, and not the 77th like so many believe not knowing the administrative details of Bangkok Metropolis. Yet while I can understand that many laypeople don't know these details, I was clearly surprised that an official sign does show this wrong information.

Well, actually there was a Changwat Krug Thep, but only for the short period of January 1 1973 when the provinces Phra Nakhon and Thonburi were merged, and 1975 when the law on the special administrative area of Krung Thep was becoming effective [Gazette]. While the sign I spotted was a bit weathered, it was certainly not 35 years old, so it must have been made at a time when it was wrong already. Amazing Thailand as usual...

But in fact even more amazing is to try the term "จังหวัดกรุงเทพ" on the Royal Gazette search page, as this returns more than 100 results. For example in 2006 the Election Commission announced the Senator election in Bangkok calling it Changwat [Gazette] - though in the actual PDF it is correct without Changwat, only in the search index it is wrong. Though I haven't checked them all, this seems to be only an issue with the database, where the clerk entering the topic fell into the misconception that Bangkok is a province.
View Larger Map

New district for Chiang Mai

2012-12-03T13:00:00.000+01:00

The plan to create yet another new district in Chiang Mai to be named Nanthaburi (อำเภอนันทบุรี) seems to be getting steam. In September, the proposal was submitted to the province governor, who then already gave his support to the plan - and this was renewed by the newly appointed governor as well. End of October, the PAO Chiang Mai also approved the proposal. Today, the strategy group of the province administration (กลุ่มงานยุทธศาสตร์จังหวัดเชียงใหม่) had the proposal on its agenda as well. The report on this meeting says that the proposal will be submitted to the Ministry of Interior soon, proposing to create the district as a special case since it does not match the normal criteria for a new district.

a population of at least 25,000
at least 4 subdistrict
new district office to be at least 20 kilometer away from the district office of the parent district
approval by the local government entities affected

The proposed district will have just two subdistricts - Mae Tuen (ตำบลแม่ตื่น) and Mon Chong (ตำบลม่อนจอง) - which together have a population of just 15,388 (as of December 31 2011). I don't fully understand that according to the article today this new district is supposed to be done as part of the 80th birthday celebration of HM the Queen, as that was already in August this year, and the district cannot be created retroactively.

As can be seen in the map, the area of the new district (in red) is very remote not just from the district Omkoi to which it belongs now, it is also about the most remote part seen from the center of the province. Yet even though it is so remote, Google Streetview was already there...