Deliberations yesterday began on a new Thai constitution, which includes clauses to stop parties winning a majority and allows unelected officials to govern, in a bid by the Thai junta to end a near-decade of political turmoil.
However, the charter is widely seen as an assault on the electoral success of the former ruling Shinawatra family.
Parties led by or aligned to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s billionaire family have won every election since 2001, prompting two coups backed by the royalist establishment and nearly a decade of acrimony that has frequently spilled into violence.
Photo: EPA
The junta-appointed National Reform Council (NRC) yesterday began a week of discussion on the draft charter, a process which could see the document receive royal endorsement by September.
Thailand’s constitution has undergone more than a dozen re-writes since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.
The leaders of a coup in May last year said another new charter is needed to soothe Thailand’s caustic divides ahead of fresh elections scheduled for next year.
Constitution Drafting Committee chairman Borwornsak Uwanno yesterday said the new charter “will not allow a majority government which can become a parliamentary dictatorship.”
Speaking in the televised debate, he denied it was “a blueprint” to end the domination of the Shinawatra family, but would instead empower the Thai people at the expense of politicians.
Under the draft, future elections will be decided by a proportional representation system similar to Germany’s that would favor smaller parties and coalition governments. However, to avoid legislative paralysis under coalitions, prime ministers would not have to be directly elected by the public.
Lawmakers would also be barred from becoming ministers “so that they can not use that power to unduly influence the government,” Borwornsak said, raising the prospect of unelected officials running the government.
Analysts said the draft is not truly democratic and harks back to an era when a royalist and military elite had a stranglehold on politics.
That grip has been threatened by the rise of the Shinawatra family, who draw on the support of the northern portion of the nation, which is poorer than the south and historically receives a smaller share of state finance from Bangkok.
Their supporters say the family recognized their changing political and economic aspirations with subsidies for farmers and other pro-poor policies, such as virtually free healthcare and micro loans.
However, their enemies, principally among the Bangkok elite, military and royalist southerners, have justified army power grabs by saying the family has poisoned Thailand with populist policies, cronyism and lead the poor astray.
The elite’s main party, the Democrats, have failed to win a popular vote in nearly 20 years.
The NRC — which consists of experts, academics and former politicians — has 30 days to recommend major amendments to the draft.
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