Can an absolute objectivity be ensured in the election monitoring process by the external professionals?
ANSWER [Eric Bjornlund]: All election monitoring groups and individual election observers or expert advisors bring their own perspectives and interests to their work in monitoring or advising on elections in other countries. Sometimes, election monitoring organizations and observation missions pursue interests and objectives other than democratization or betray considerable biases, and they often reflect the national interests of sponsoring countries. Moreover, because elections are political processes that always and in all countries fall short of the ideal, assessing the quality of elections is necessarily a somewhat subjective process. But the more professional organizations strive to be as objective as possible and to assess elections honestly and forthrightly. Q [Somsri]: It is hard to make election commissioners impartial or neutral. Many people in Thailand want to kick the 3 commissioners out of their duty and select the new team. We have 5 commissioners for ECT, one passed away
