This would make it difficult for volunteers who were stationed outside their districts of residence on polling day. It took an urgent appeal to the Prime Minister to force a change of mind. The committee (by then name "Pollwatch") was less successful its attempts to amend standard voting procedures Because of the logistics involved, its relatively small budget, and difficulty in artracting volunteers, Pollwatch was also forced to limit its recruitment to 30,000 people to cover between 20 and 30 percent of the polling booths.
vote-buying and the 22 March election.
Vote-buying is sometimes given the name "Roi-et Fever", derived from the name of the province in which the practice is supposed to have originated, An alternative origin is claimed by some to have come from the province of Si Sa Ket, where a politician widely called "the salt-fish MP" was renown for his distribution of dried salted fish that was later converted into cash, whatever the origin, before the 22 March 1992 election, inducements to electors to vote for particular candidates were many and varied.
For decades, some businessmen had been prepared to share their wealth with their community. If they also happened to stand for parliament, it could be argued that the electorate was all the better for having such a community spirited candidate prepared to represent them. For example, in the March 1992 election, Boonchu Trithong, a wealthy local telecommunications and logging magnate and arms dealer, stood as a candidate for the New Aspiration Party in the northern province of Lampang. He was well known in the area, having sponsored libraries, agricultural and educational foundations, hospitals and various other civic groups, He had set up a rural development foundation with a Bt200,000d donation in almost all of lampang’s tambons." Strictly strictly speaking his generosity could not be classified as vote-buying, particularly since. the gift-giving occurred before the election imposed a ban on such spending Yet, surely voters would be influenced by his generosity. Where did the dividing line between the legal and the illegal lie?