As most members are expats and did not have a chance to vote yesterday (19th), I ask the following question.

How would you have voted for the new constitution?

I was going to comment in the Current Affairs section but maybe here is a better spot. The referendum came out about how i had envisioned.

I would have voted NO. Not because i was pro TRT and/or anti Junta there were just too many provisions weakening Thailand's democracy in the draft. I grew up in a political household and a free democracy is very important to me personally it was ingrained in me as a child. It's all well and good to say that changes could be made at a later date but they won't be, that's the history of Thailand.

You cannot throw amnesty for a coup into a constitution, that's a dangerous precedent that can only lead to more coups. We are all non Thai nationals, or mostly, and we all know what would happen in our home country if the military tried to take over, we just don't know which wall they would be stood against.

With martial law in 1/2 the country how can you have a referendum or a vote of any kind that's fair and impartial, you can't. The North and Northeast voted not as the CNS propaganda machine would like us to believe by being paid 200 baht each, but because they could finally have a say rather than being quashed for a year. The people i talked to in the North that voted Yes did not vote for a constitution or approval of the CNS, they voted Yes just to get on with it. That's not approval in any way. Probably 1/2 the yes voted in the North and Northeast were NO votes in disguise. If campaigners for the No side were allowed to campaign against the Constitution they probably would have swamped the Yes vote, the CNS knew that and did everything in their power to quash any attempt on the NO side to mobilize and campaign. That's a shame, as they complained about Thaksin's snap election way back when, but had their own snap Referendum.

The thing that really surprised me is the exceptionally low voter turnout in Bangkok. It may make for a very interesting election as the TRT held almost all the seats there and the Bangkokians didn't show their hand in the referendum.

The CNS and the Government must now back off completely. Let politicians fight out the election unhindered and no more of their games, hoping to fix the next election with goofy election laws like the goofy Referendum ones or Thailand will lose very big in the eyes of the international community

Understandable Opinion

Excellent Poll T1!

I voted no as I believe that it gives too much authority to the Government and not the people

Quote:The thing that really surprised me is the exceptionally low voter turnout in Bangkok

I am surprised by this too. If the population is 65 million then there would be around 50 million eligible voters. If the turn out was just 25 million then the percentage that took the time to vote on this important issue is around 50%