Committee to vet amnesty bill

PARLIAMENT has voted to appoint a 35-member committee to vet the amnesty bill on its second reading. The 35 members include Matubhum party-list MP General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who was recruited under the Cabinet quota, and outsiders such as Thai Spring leader Kaewsan Atibodhi, who is in the quota of the opposition Democrat Party.
The MPs were asked to submit within seven days the points they wanted to be scrutinised.
After 15 hours of debate, the amnesty bill proposed by Pheu Thai MP Worachai Hema yesterday passed its first reading, accepted in principle, with 300 MPs voting for the bill and 124 against.
On the second day of debate yesterday, breaks had to be taken twice after arguments erupted, because government MPs wanted the debate to end, while opposition MPs insisted they wanted to continue scrutinising the bill. Deputy House Speaker Charoen Jankomol lost his patience and called for a vote on whether to end the meeting after MPs took turns to debate and counterattack.
Opposition party whip chief Jurin Laksanawisit said yesterday the opposition had changed its mind about boycotting the debate and would join the vetting of the amnesty bill on its second reading to prevent a grand-scale whitewash.
Jurin said the opposition had earlier considered boycotting the vetting of the bill, but reconsidered its position, because a vetting committee that consisted only of government MPs, might result in amnesty being granted to all wrongdoers, which would not be good for the country in the long term.
Government whip chief Amnuay Klangpa said he was not certain if the amnesty bill proposed by Pheu Thai MP Worachai Hema would be passed in the first reading yesterday, because MPs took more than five hours on Wednesday before they started the debate.
Bhum Jai Thai’s Nakhon Ratchasima MP Boonjong Wongtrairat protested against the bill, reasoning that it would destroy the country’s sovereignty and rule of law as well as promote violence. He urged Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to withdraw the bill from Parliament’s agenda and hold a public referendum on whether to keep it.
Article 3 of the bill, said Boonjong, stipulated that amnesty would be granted to leaders and this left room for personal interpretation as questionable political figures did not want to admit whether they fell in the category of “leader”.
Pheu Thai’s Chiang Rai MP Samart Kaewmeechai dismissed the opposition party’s concerns that the bill would grant amnesty to all suspects charged under the lese majeste law. He insisted that during the vetting of the bill, government MPs would not include amnesty for those accused or convicted of lese majeste offences.
Pheu Thai party-list MP Nuttawut Saikuar argued that this amnesty bill was not the first of its kind as the country had previously passed 24 amnesty bills. He said the bill would be a tool to end political conflicts and lawmakers should not think only in terms of the rule of law but also in terms of what was best for society.
“A coup is the most serious violation of the rule of law because power to govern the country is consolidated under the thumb of one person while the Constitution is torn. Every time this happens, an amnesty law is passed to pardon the law offenders,’’ he said.
Nuttawut, who was among red-shirt leaders in the 2010 rally protests, said the red-shirt leaders who took to the rally stage at the Ratchaprasong intersection had vowed not to accept pardons. He also insisted the bill would not include lese majeste offenders.