Thai people living outside the kingdom will have no vote in the public referendum on the junta-sponsored draft constitution.

Thai people outside the country who are of an eligible age to vote in elections have not been given the right to participate in the 7 August 2016 referendum on the draft constitution, BBC Thai reported.

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said that it is a waste of budget and time to allow Thai citizens living outside the country to participate in the draft charter referendum because the authorities could not provide them with a summary of the draft constitution.

The Deputy Prime Minister added that the process to allow Thais living abroad to vote from outside the kingdom would be too complicated.

In the 2011 general election, about 147,000 out of roughly one million Thai people who live overseas at the time registered at Thai Embassies and Consulates to participate in the 2011 election, which brought about the Yingluck Shinawatra administration.   

An online campaign on Change.org to collect signatures from Thais who support overseas voting failed.

Duangta De Leroux, a Thai assistant nurse who has been living in France for 21 years, told BBC Thai in an interview “the government is wrong to cut off the voices of Thai people living abroad even though we work and always send money back to Thailand.”

Wongduean Laomongkhonchaisi, the owner of a Thai restaurant in London who has been living in the UK for the last 35 years, told BBC Thai “It’s alright. The government probably has their own reasons, although I regret that I won’t be able to vote. I still feel that I’m Thai and would like to ask Thai people in the country to exercise their rights.”

According to Prof Peter John of University College London, UK citizens living outside the UK for more than 15 years are not given the right to participate in UK elections, BBC Thai reported.

Thai and foreign activists flash the symbolic three-fingered salute in front of a cinema in Paris in November 2014 against Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, the junta leader and Prime Minister (file Photo)