Reforms need 'united society'

The key to the success of national reform lies in the strength and unity of society, a National Reform Council seminar heard yesterday.

More than 10 different civic groups and a number of promi-nent figures attended the “Uniting the Forces for Social Reform” forum, and they all agreed that communities needed to be empowered.

NRC President Thienchay Kiranan, Prime Minister’s advi-sory council chairman Somkid Jatusripitak and NRC social re-form panel chairman Ampon Jindawattana called for civic groups and communities around the country to join reform efforts.

Thienchay, along with others, said solving social issues was challenging given their complexity but success could be obtained by all sectors of society helping tackle the problem.

The 10 civic groups agreed that for reform to be successful, society as a whole must be strengthened. 

Somkid said the public had begun to demonstrate a desire and passion for participating in reform, which was vital for Thailand’s future.

He said past reform attempts had failed because of the discontinuity of governments – meaning not enough time was devoted to the process because national reform took a long time. 

However, the premier’s chief adviser said that would not happen now.

“Reform must begin from a leader who initiates direction, points out the problems, and creates inspiration for change, but that hasn’t been the case in the past. However the premier and junta are now determined to do so,” he said.

Somkid said the reform process would not be a success if the public did not join hands and help push through reform agenda.

In the past, he said the public’s true power was not realised be-cause there had been a lack of unity. But if the public united, significant power would be generated.

Ampon agreed the community was the key to successful reform, hence he put forward the proposals to decentralise power, reduce inequality and improve public participation in writing the new constitution.

“The [social reform] panel’s responsibility is to create mechanisms that will strengthen communities,” he said.

“We want to see the people’s power and strong communities that are supported by legislation, and laws that hinder the people’s power should be scrapped.” 

The NRC’s 18 panels on various reform areas are scheduled to present their ideas and proposals to all NRC members at meetings that start tomorrow and finish on Wednesday.

Some panels have already revealed their proposals to the public, with some of the proposals drawing criticism from fellow NRC members, charter drafters and National Legislative Assembly members, including the proposal by the panel on political reform to hold direct elections for prime minister and cabinet members. 

However, Thienchay believes the contrasting proposals of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), the NLA and the NRC with regard to national reform is not problematic because it is their responsibility to express opinions.

“The duty of the NRC is to offer ideas and proposals that they believe will be beneficial for the drafting of the new constitution,” he said.

He said it was the CDC’s responsibility to gather proposals and ideas from the NRC, the NLA, the cabinet, the National Council for Peace and Order, the public and other relevant organisations to help it write the charter.

As a result, he said the NRC would not impose its will on the charter drafters if there were differing conclusions.

The NRC president urged the public to closely monitor the NRC meetings, where all 18 panels would propose reform ideas for discussion and debate,

He said the content that would be deliberated was very important for everyone.