POLITICS
Itthipol Khunpluem yesterday appeared to have succeeded in defending his family turf as unofficial results showed him topping the mayoral election in Pattaya and beating his two rivals by thousands of votes. A new group also filled the most seats in the Pattaya city council.
Unofficial results showed that Mr Itthipol beat Surat Mekawarakul, who had the support of the Democrat party, and Alisa Phanthusak, by a convincing margin in a three-horse race.
Mr Itthipol is the youngest son of Somchai Khunpluem, or Kamnan Poh, an influential figure in Chon Buri, and the youngest brother of veteran politician Sonthaya, former tourism and sports minister.
There were 85 polling stations in the four constituencies of the province, with a total of 64,735 people eligible to vote in the mayoral and city council elections.
Voter turnout was over 50%.
The polls were of significance since various political groups fielded their candidates for the mayoral seat in this tourist town which is granted an annual budget of three billion baht.
Yesterday's poll was the second victory for the influential family in local politics. Earlier this week, Witthaya Khunpluem secured the chairmanship of the provincial administrative organisation (PAO) in another election, defeating a candidate from the Democrat party.
No incidents involving poll fraud were reported.
Only leaflets with messages attacking certain politicians were found.
Ms Alisa said efforts had been made to damage her reputation.
She sent open letters asking for votes from the public, ''but the letters were tampered with and the message was changed telling the people to vote for other candidates''.
She believed it was the work of her rivals.
She will ask the Election Commission to look into the matter.
All the eight candidates fielded by the Khunpluem family suffered heavy defeats at the hands of Democrat candidates in the general election on Dec 23 last year.
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