The Office of the Election Commission (EC) has started drawing up new constituencies for a new electoral system adopted by the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) that may see the number of House seats in Bangkok reduced by 10.
A source in the EC Office said the agency has made preparations for the new electoral system — known as mixed member proportional representation (MMP) — and come up with initial numbers of MPs.
Under the model adopted by charter drafters, the number of parliamentary seats will be reduced from 500 to between 450 and 470 under the MMP system.
Of the total, about 250 MPs will be drawn from constituencies and about 200 from party lists.
Since the CDC has resolved that the party-list system be divided into six groups, the EC Office has drawn up the groups and calculated initial numbers of MPs per group as follows:
The six groups are the northern group with 15 provinces; the upper northeastern group with 12 provinces; the lower northeastern group with eight provinces; the upper central group with 17 provinces; the lower central group with nine provinces; and the southern group with 16 provinces.
The northern group will have 41 constituency MPs and 18 party-list MPs; the upper northeastern will have 42 constituency MPs and 28 party-list MPs; the lower northeastern will have 41 constituency MPs and 46 party-list MPs; the upper central will have 42 constituency MPs and 50 party-list MPs; the lower central group will have 44 constituency MPs and 30 party-list MPs; and the southern group will have 40 constituency MPs and 33 party-list MPs.
According to the source, since the overall number of constituency MPs has been cut from 375 to about 250, every province will see the number of constituency MPs reduced.
Based on initial calculations — using a ratio of one MP per 260,499 people — Bangkok will see its seats reduced from 33 to 22. Nakhon Ratchasima will also see its seat number shrink from 15 to 10, while Ubon Ratchathani with 11 and Khon Kaen with 10 currently will have only seven seats each.