Mon villagers are now Thais and very keen to vote

General News - Sunday December 23, 2007

RACE TO PARLIAMENT EXERCISING A RIGHT

Mon villagers are now Thais and very keen to vote Story

by SURASAK GLAHAN

Thirty-six years ago Ma Yee, an ethnic Mon refugee from Burma, first applied for Thai citizenship. She was 17. Now she has a chance to exercise one of her most important rights _ the right to vote.

Ma Yee is one of about 1,000 Mon refugees who settled in the Mon-dominated village of Wang Kha in Sangkhla Buri near the Burmese border in Kanchanaburi province decades ago and struggled for a legal identity. Their struggle finally ended with approval from the Interior Ministry in late 2005.

Along with citizenship comes the right to vote, and the 53-year-old woman said she is going to cast her ballot today.

''I don't know any candidates or what they are going to do [as MPs],'' she said. ''I cannot read Thai but my Thai husband does.

''So I will ask him which candidate numbers I should vote for at a polling station.''

She has never had the right to vote in any election, except the annulled April 2 poll last year, and she is thrilled to exercise this right that most people take for granted.

She is one of many ethnic Mon people in this mountainous, lakeside village located next to the Burmese border who say they are eager to vote in the election.

Many said they went to vote last year and were keen to do it again, despite the fact that they do not know any of the candidates _ voting is just something they had wanted to do for a long time.

''My husband and I will go to vote because it is a right that took us decades to get,'' said another middle-aged woman.

Villagers here want their MPs to help solve economic problems so that more tourists will come to the village.

Things are more expensive these days, they say.

When the economy is not good people don't travel and that affects tourism in many parts of the country, including this village in a remote district.

But Bang-orn Uttamahachai, 23, thinks that a new government can improve things.

She said she wanted a new government to grant citizenship to many migrants here including her father, so they have a chance to work in other districts where more jobs with better pay are available.

There are about 20,000 Mon, Burmese and Karen people living in this district, and about 2,500 of them are entitled to vote after the ministry granted them citizenship two years ago.

Wang Kha is also the name of this sub-district. It is home to approximately 1,500 Mon migrants, about 700 of them entitled to vote, according to Sangkhla Buri deputy district chief Arkorn Suthabanthidpong.

There are 9,965 eligible voters in Sangkhla Buri, which is much smaller than the 114,264 eligible voters in Muang district.

Five parliamentary seats are up for grabs in Kanchanaburi, where 834,447 people are eligible to vote.

Most candidates have been busy trying to woo votes in other larger districts and have rarely come here, let alone to this Mon village.

There are only pick-up trucks driven around carrying billboards introducing candidates, which hardly grabs the villagers' attention.

Ma Yee, despite her eagerness to exercise her right to vote, believes the election will not change anything for her.

''Everything seems to be the same here,'' she said.

Bangkok Post