An election commissioner has defended the procurement of voting machines in the latest showdown between the commissioners and a former secretary general. The Election Commission (EC) decided on Dec 8 not to renew the employment contract of secretary general Puchong Nutrawong because his performance evaluation did not meet the requirement. Mr Puchong, who worked for the EC for 18 years, claimed his removal was not fair and that he could not do his job properly because the EC commissioners kept intervening with the administration.
One of his accusations was that there might be some irregularities in the purchases of voting machines to be used at 95,000 polling units under the budget of 10 billion baht. Somchai Srisuttiyakorn, an EC commissioner, on Monday dismissed the charge.
Mr Somchai said the project was initiated in 2003 and four generations of the machines had been bought. A budget of 57 million baht has been spent on training and implementation.
Full Article: Somchai defends voting machine purchases | Bangkok Post: news.