As panels offer proposals, ball in charter drafters' court
Over the past week, different panels of the National Legislative Assembly and the National Reform Council have presented their proposals to the Constitution Drafting Committee on how a new charter should look.
Many proposals are interesting and are worth being included in the country’s new constitution. However, some are controversial and have attracted widespread debate. These include a proposal for direct election of the prime minister and other members of the cabinet.
It remains unclear now as to whether the constitution drafters will put all the suggestions into the new charter when writing it, or exclude the more controversial of them.
An interesting question is what will happen if the CDC disagrees with and rejects some of the proposals. Recent comments by many key members of the committee pointed to their disagreement with some of the more controversial proposals, including one for direct election of the entire cabinet.
CDC spokesman Wuthsarn Tanchai said he did not think direct election would be the right solution to the problem of power abuse by political office holders.
Borwornsak Uwanno, the chief constitution drafter, said that for him, election of a prime minister would “not only put wings on the tiger, but also enable the tiger to dive in the water”.
In fact, the CDC is part of the National Reform Council. It is a committee in the NRC. The committee was appointed by the NRC’s president and the CDC chief Borwornsak also serves as deputy president of the NRC.
According to the post-coup provisional charter, the NRC has a duty to gather viewpoints about national reform to be incorporated in a new constitution.
As a part of the NRC, the CDC is supposed to follow proposals made by the council, which could be compared to its mother. The charter-drafting committee will have to do a lot of explaining if it fails to do so satisfactorily.
Also, the CDC has to include the proposals that all the agencies involved agree with. There is no sensible reason as to why those proposals would be omitted from a new constitution.
If the final draft of a new charter differs from the proposals that are agreed upon, the CDC will be met with the suspicion that it’s a draft constitution that has already been predetermined.
In the final stage of constitution writing, as stated in the interim charter, the NRC will determine as to whether the final draft meets its proposed specifications. If the main content of the final draft does not meet its prescriptions – or the explanations by the drafters are not satisfactory – the NRC members have the right to reject the draft constitution. This is a principle that should be observed.
