A total of 48,117 people have registered their senatorial candidacies across the country in the five days of registration which ended on Friday, according to Sawaeng Boonmee, secretary-general of the Election Commission (EC).
Of the 48,226 people who applied for registration, 109 were rejected as unqualified.
Sawaeng said that election officials will now re-check the qualifications of the 48,117 successful registrations more thoroughly and will announce the final list of those who are qualified by next Wednesday.
He disclosed that, while it does not pose a problem for the election, there are two districts where no one has applied for candidacy and, in some districts, not all the 20 professional groups are represented.
Under the Senate election law, candidates must vote among themselves at district, provincial and national levels. The 10 with the most votes in the 20 professional groups in the national-level election will become senators. The five runners-up in each of the 20 groups will become reservists.
Sawaeng admitted that the number of applicants was below projections, probably because the EC set the qualification level too high and a number of potential applicants could not find people to certify their work experience. The complicated election system may have discouraged many from standing for election, he added.
The five provinces with the highest numbers of senatorial candidates are Si Sa Ket (2,764), Bangkok (2,489), Chiang Mai (2,000), Buri Ram (1,836) and Nakhon Si Thammarat (1,798).
The six provinces with the fewest candidates are Nan (98), Tak (102), Samut Songkhram (128), Phang-nga (134), Uttaradit (150) and Nakhon Phanom (150).
Manvipha Thongprasert, elections director for Bangkok, said that, if there are fewer than five candidates in any of the 20 professional groups, they do not have to vote at the district-level election and will automatically move up to the provincial-level.
