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KPI Congress 20th
132
2018
Thai Democracy on the Move

religious leaders and entrepreneurs have the opportunity to become regents or governors.

Furthermore, when the regent or mayor or Governor does not work properly, the DPRD can
impeach it during the annual evaluation.

With this model, the selection is relatively efficient in terms of costs because the

process of choosing a regent/mayor or governor involves only DPRD members. For the district
level, with only 45 DPRD members, a regent candidate was enough to gather votes to get

23 votes. In this case there is no need for large-scale campaign costs or massive ballot boxes
and ballots for millions of people.

However, the election model is loaded with money politics at the DPRD level.

It has become a common phenomenon that candidates will give hundreds of millions for
several members to get 23 votes. In addition, the annual accountability report forum is also

often used as an arena for transactions between Regional Heads and DPRD members. DPRD
members easily threatened to impeach the Regent. Conversely, to secure a position, the

Regional Head must allocate a budget or a number of projects that can be a barter tool for
the DPRD to remain in power. In Law No. 32/2004, the election of Regional Heads has shifted

again from domination by the DPRD to citizens. Regional head elections are regulated in article
56 of Law No. 32 of 2004:

“Paragraph (1) regional heads and deputy regional heads are elected in

one candidate pair which is carried out democratically based on direct, general,
free, confidential, honest and fair principles; and paragraph (2) The candidate
pair as referred to in paragraph (1) is submitted by a political party or joint po-

litical party”.

The community has the right to choose their prospective leaders by conducting direct
เอกสารประกอบการประชุมกลุ่มย่อยที่ 3 same time, the DPRD is also not entitled to impeach the regional head. With direct elections,
elections. This is in line with the direct presidential election. In order to elect a Regional Head,

citizens do not need to leave their votes to the DPRD but there are direct candidates. At the

the more open the opportunity for anyone to run for regional head.

Comparing the three models of regional head elections, it is clear that the shift
occurred from one law to another. Centralistic assignment democracy (Law No. 5 of 1974)