Yuttapong Calls For Dismissal of GLO Chief

Democrat candidate for Maha Sarakham, Yuttapong Charasathien, is calling for the dismissal of the chief of the Government Lottery Office which was responsible for the printing and distribution of ballots for the recent national election. Yuttapong, who I met at a wedding reception in Maha Sarakham in November of last year, says that extra ballots were printed and used in electoral fraud by substituting legitimate ballots cast for Democrat candidates with the extra ballots marked for other (most likely TRT) candidates.

Yuttapong is not disputing the results in his own constituency, in which he was the incumbent and the losing candidate, but gave a number of examples of other candidates from the Democrat and Mahachon parties who were defeated by TRT candidates even though they had consistently led in opinion polls before the election. However, when I spoke to him in November he had seemed genuinely confident that he would be able to retain his seat in the parliament.