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Bangkok: Thais went to the polls yesterday to vote in the country's first elections for the upper house of parliament since a 2006 military coup ousted elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The 76 members of the Senate to be elected, one from each of the country's provinces, will join 74 others already appointed by a committee made up of judges, the Election Commission and the heads of various independent agencies.
The vote was largely peaceful, but a bomb blast near a polling station in Thailand's restive south injured three soldiers. A new constitution enacted last year divided the 150-member Senate into appointed and elected members.
Senators are not allowed to have political party affiliations. Under the previous constitution, which was scrapped after the coup, all of its members were elected.
Thaksin returned from 17 months in self-imposed exile on Thursday, but he was not eligible to vote because he was banned from political activities for five years after a court found him guilty in absentia of electoral fraud.
The coup-makers ousted Thaksin for alleged corruption and abuse of power. The changes to the constitution were among several measures they subsequently took to limit politicians' power.
Laws
The Senate has the power to remove Cabinet members, to appoint and remove the commissioners of independent state organisations, and to approve laws passed by the lower house.
Thai media said nationwide voter turnout was from 50 per cent to 60 per cent - lower than the 70 per cent the Election Commission had anticipated.
Election Commissioner Sodsri Sathayatham said the disappointing turnout was probably because the ballot followed so soon after the general election and that the candidates didn't campaign enough.
The Election Commission said members of the public had lodged 34 electoral fraud complaints by the time the polls closed. Vote-buying normally plagues Thai elections. In the southern province of Narathiwat, a bomb exploded near a polling station, injuring three soldiers on patrol.
Narathiwat is one of three provinces in the south plagued by a separatist insurgency that has left more than 2,900 people dead since January 2004.
In the December election for the 480 members of the lower House of Representatives, a majority of seats were won by the Thaksin-allied Peoples Power Party. It now leads a six-party coalition government.
Thaksin's homecoming was widely seen as a return to the centre of Thai politics despite the military's efforts to eradicate his legacy.
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