CMPO warns Thai EC not to cancel Feb 2 election

BANGKOK, February 1 (TNA) - The caretaker government’s Centre for Maintaining Peace and Order (CMPO) insists that the Election Commission of Thailand (EC) must be held responsible if it ordered the cancellation of Sunday’s general election. A CMPO member, Tharit Pengdit ,who is also Department of Special Investigation chief, warned on Saturday that an election cancellation order would damage Thailand’s democratic system and people who issue the order would be prosecuted with both civil and criminal penalties. Tarit's remarks came after an election commissioner Somchai Srisuthiyakorn announced earlier in the day that the EC might issue an order to cancel the February 2 general election, citing the problem on disrupted ballot distributions in the three violence-plagued southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. Tharit said the CMPO has sent an urgent letter to the EC, asking it to immediately solve the problem in the provinces, where election ballots for party-list candidates could not be taken out from post offices and distributed to polling booths due to protesters’ blockade. Tarit suggested the EC to print new sets of ballots and send them to the polling booths in the provinces. (TNA)