Call for seminar of NRC members
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A group of National Reform Council members have suggested holding a seminar for all 250 members so they can get to know each other and discuss their work, a source said yesterday.
The source said the expected cost of the three-day seminar would be about Bt10 million, The group, which consists of former politicians, had asked the council’s secretariat to organise the seminar.
They wanted the seminar organised after the NRC’s first meeting, when the council selected its president and vice president, the source said.
They also wanted their colleagues to set the guidelines for their work and had campaigned for the staging of the seminar through senior bureaucrats.
Charae Panpruang, secretary-general of the Secretariat of the House of Representatives – who also acts as secretariat of the NRC – said that he had not been formally informed about the project.
He said that if there were to be a request, he would discuss it with NLA President Pornpetch Wichitcholchai.
Charae said that he did not know how much money would be required to fund the project.
NRC member Wanchai Sornsiri, a former senator, is involved in the push to hold the seminar.
He said his group, which consisted of mostly former senators, met this week to discuss the scope of their work. They wanted to discuss this matter with other NRC members in order to ensure unity.
He said his group agreed that the NRC should focus on brainstorming ideas and proposals for national reform in 11 areas, rather than working as a “political assembly”.
In a related development, NRC member Poldej Pinprateep said that he wanted members of the soon-to-be-appointed Constitution Drafting Committee to have new ideas while they should not be easily influenced.
The NRC is empowered by the provisional charter to nominate 20 out of the 36 constitution drafters.
