Electoral Politics in Southeast and East Asia yellow cards on the grounds of violating section 44 of the Electoral Law. 9 The power of the ECT to issue yellow or red cards does not end when it endorses the election results. The ECT can continue to investigate complaints or objections and dismiss elected members of parliament for one year. For example, a yellow card was issued to the Lopburi senator who was also the speaker of the Senate. This resulted in his dismissal and he also lost in the repeat election. In the case of the HoR, the ECT issued seven elected members of the HoR with a yellow card and called a repeat election on 30 June 2001. Such a legal mandate and the determination of the ECT to combat any violation of electoral rules has had an impact on the behaviour of candidates. A greater awareness of the Electoral Law and the power of the ECT made candidates more careful in conducting electoral campaigns. In fact, in addition to the ECT and its arms, such as the police and volunteers, the P-Net kept candidates under surveillance. Moreover, rival candidates also watched each other closely and became an informative source for the ECT and the P-Net. Some candidates did so aggressively by spying on their rivals, tapping telephone conversations, buying evidence of or information on violations of the law by rivals, or conspiring to accuse their rivals of violating the electoral law. From 400 constituencies, the ECT received 337 objections, mostly from candidates. Among the private organizations certified by the ECT as watchdogs in the election, the P-Net and the Poll Watch Foundation were the most well known and active in supervising the election process, both before and after the election. Moreover, the scope of the P-Net was not limited to candidates, but included the ECT and government offices. With limited support from the ECT, the P-Net was able to focus their monitoring operation on 206 constituencies that were considered as having a fierce competition(Srisuthiyakorn, 2001: 15). The P-Net’s strategies were to report complaints to the ECT and employ media coverage. The media also played a crucial role in monitoring electoral processes. Situations or cases relating to fraud and irregularities were publicized. Media coverage was extensive in the election of the HoR, involving everything from the campaigns and activities of candidates and parties to daily analysis and discussion of parties’ policies. In addition to various actors supervising the electoral process, the introduction of a new vote counting system, in which all ballots in each constituency were tallied at a central venue, proved to be relatively successful in increasing voters’ 9. Section 44 of the Electoral Law stipulates that no candidate nor any person shall commit any act to induce electors to cast a ballot for him or her or other candidates or any political party or to abstain from voting for any candidate or political party by the following means: i) Providing, giving, offering, promising to give or preparing to give properties or any other benefits which can be calculated in money value to any person; ii) Giving, offering or promising to give money, properties or any other benefits whether directly or indirectly to the community, association, foundation, temple, educational institution, asylum or any other institution; iii) Advertising for an election by organizing entertainment; iv) Treating or promising to treat any person with meals; v) Deceiving, forcing, threatening, intimidating, slandering or inducing misunderstanding in the popularity of any candidate or political party. 298