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Published on December 20, 2007

 Nine TV stations will work with the Interior Ministry to release near real-time election results that should be quicker than Election Commission updates.

"This will enable [reports on vote counting] to be efficient," Lt General Kittitat Bamnejphan, chairman of the Television Pool of Thailand, which covers important state events, said yesterday.

The group says 80 per cent of the unofficial tallies will be reported to viewers within two hours after the last ballot is cast.  Kittitat said the key would be the speed with which the public can learn the poll results from the moment ballot counting begins.

Jarin Jakkapat, deputy director-general of the Interior Ministry's Local Administration Department, said the joint effort was a "public service" to fulfil the need to know the election outcome as soon as possible.

Some 20,000 volunteers selected by the department will dispatch the latest tallies by telephone and the Internet.

The Interior Ministry's involvement, however, has drawn some questions.

Somsri Hananuntasuk, executive director of the Asian Network for Free Elections, worries about possible manipulation of the media by the Interior Ministry.

"The department is part of the Interior Ministry and we're worried about it. We don't feel confident because in the past the Interior Ministry had problems holding elections," Somsri told The Nation.

Before the Election Commission was created under the 1997 charter, the ministry organised general elections and was accused by many of supporting whichever group was in power.

Jarin discounted the fears, saying the ministry was not involved in the counting process. Officials and local people selected by the department would only report what they see on the counting boards, he said.

"Manipulation . . . now I don't think that's the issue. We won't interfere anywhere during the counting process. Our volunteers are officials and students who have nothing at stake whatsoever. They will just convey information from the counting boards. How could that be considered manipulation?" he said.

"Actually the Interior Ministry has been in pain from being branded as serving the powers-that-be. But we have our own discipline. [Trying to take control] would be like destroying our own reputation."

All private channels including Nation Channel, ASTV and True Visions will also take part and use common unofficial counting results.

The other stations are Channel 3, the Army-owned Channel 5, Modernine TV, TITV and channels 7 and 11, while other partners include Sripatum University and TOT Plc.

Sripatum will serve as the compiling and distributing centre, staffed with 400 volunteers and 100 workers and equipped with 300 brand-new computers.

The project will cost Bt20 million, with various channels sharing the burden, organisers said.

Ubonrat Siriyuwasak, chairwoman of the Campaign for Media Reform and a broadcast journalism lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, said the EC should have been responsible for the vote count reports. "Why shouldn't the EC be doing it, as [the Interior Ministry's] responsibility for running polls is long past."

She also cautioned that pooling resources could mean news and information would be less diversified than before, when at least three alliances

of TV stations and newspapers provided good checks and

balances among them.

However, senior editors at Nation Channel pointed out that each station had its own news teams to cover all aspects of the election, including whether the poll was clean and fair and whether the vote tallying was transparent.

Pravit Rojanaphruk

 The Nation