The Election Commission might be the last body to be blamed for the low nationwide turn-out in the Senate election, particularly for the 41% turn-out of Bangkokians in Sunday's poll.

The first contributing reason was the 2007 Constitution that allows 74 out of 150 senators to be hand-picked by a handful people instead of the constituents.

The people's voice is not considered heaven's voice anymore, one candidate for one province; why bother to go to the poll!?

The second factor, and perhaps the most important, is political fatigue among the people, especially the urbanites and the middle-class.

They are facing real issues of skyrocketing oil prices, soaring cost of living and the perception of a stagnating economy; so thus did not want to debate or fight for political values that could not address their immediate problems.

Politically-active voters are roughly divided into two categories; those anti-Thaksin and those pro.

The anti-Thaksin groups have lost steam since the 23 December general election as the Democrats they voted for (although they were not really fond of them) could not make a big enough presence to form a government.

Thaksin's return and his shadow influence over political imperatives in this land has also caused these people pain. Their memory of gathering in streets in major urban cities have become painful as things seem to have turned upside down for them.

Some of them were fancying that any scandal and corruption charges involving the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin and his cronies would finally be rejected or weakened along the judicial path, and the ban on the 111 Thai Rak Thai executives would be realized sooner rather than later.

They feel outraged that those appointed or promoted during the coup government have been axed or put into inactive post after less than a month of the Samak-nominee government, which is after all perceived as another interim government.

For the pro-Thaksin camp, the Senate poll was not so upbeat since this senate was the legacy of the coup administration anyway. After all, they felt they already had in place their dear People Power Party (PPP) government, an offshoot of the TRT, so why bother to vote.

The turn-out in many North and Northeastern strongholds could be explained by this sentiment; the turn-outs were not so huge, averaging 50-60%, compared to December turn-outs of 60-70% in the two regions.

For Bangkok , the choice of anti-graft Rosana Tositrakul's clearly announces to the Samak government that the middle class will not easily let go of the corruption-plagued nominee government, and instead will monitor their results through the eyes of this "iron lady."

Meanwhile, the No-Vote tick in many constituencies has become quite a political indicator, if the EC and other observers cared to analyze it.

Bangkok's No votes accounted for 10%, Chiang Mai 12%, Nonthaburi 15%, Nakhon Ratchasima 8%, Ubon Ratchathani 7%, etc.

These figures should be interpreted along with the void ballots as well.

Although the 2007 Constitution bans direct family members (father, mother, children and spouse) of politicians from running for the Senate, many candidates won the election with the support of political groups.

Other candidates who scored high votes included former senators who won in the 2006 senatorial election but had not started work because of the September coup.

They included Chonburi's Surachai Chaitrakulthong, who was the former chairman for the Provincial Federation of Thai Industry.

Direk Tungfang won the seat in Nonthaburi, Paiboon Samsiripong won the seat in Pathum Thani and Sai Kangkawekin in Rayong.

While the coup-appointed National Legislative Assembly has faded away, the newly-elected and newly-handpicked Senators are about to function, supposedly, as stipulated in the 2007 constitution, with more power than members of the Lower House in term of government scrutiny.

However, Thai people may have yet to learn at least one lesson during the past turbulent years that we cannot give up our rights just because polling is over.

A check and balance mechanism might be in place according to the laws, but the merits of accountability and respect of people's own rights are more crucial and it is our life-long duty to check if something goes wrong.

Do not just let the few good people in parliament shoulder our task.