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108 ENHANCING ELECTIONS AS INSTRUMENTS OF DEMOCRACY IN THE ASEAN REGION

This reflects the expectation of full responsibility to be held by
the Election Commission. In particular, the Election Commissioners not

only have to carry out successful election administrations, but they are
also expected to play a fair judging role in electoral competitions for
every involved sector.

The Election Commission has, for the most part, functioned
to exercise their powers and duties in compliance with what stipulated

in the Constitution. The exceptions are, however, observed in the past
two elections: the 2006 and the 2014 Elections (eight years apart), which

have raised an issue of public trust to the Thai voters. It became a major
issue in the drafting process of a new constitution. One of the notable
consequences can be observed in Article 35 of Thailand’s 2006 Interim

Constitution, which stipulated a principle of drafting the new constitution,
as follows:

“The Constitution Drafting Committee shall take into

consideration the necessity and worthiness in making a determination
whether to maintain or establish an organ under the Constitution. If the

decision is to maintain or establish an organ under the Constitution,
measures to control the functioning of the organ to be efficient and
effective must be applied.”

One significant reason is the reduction of public trust towards
the later set of Election Commissioners compared to the first set of

Election Commissioners. The proof of the lack of credibility in their
performance consists of two General Elections being declared invalid

by the Constitutional Court in the Constitutional Court Ruling No. 9/2549
(9/2006) and the Constitutional Court Ruling No. 5/2557 (5/2014). As a
consequence, public funds were wasted, and the political crisis worsened.