No role for EC to hold polls in new charter

The new charter will provide for an Election Commission (EC) but it would no longer have the role of organising elections, as the Constitution Drafting Committee is looking at having other state agencies perform the task, CDC spokesman Lertrat Ratanavanich said yesterday. To reduce the EC’s workload, the constitution will entrust the Interior, Education and Public Health ministries with holding elections, he said.

“This could end the allegations of partisan behaviour by the Election Commission,” he said. The EC will retain its power to control, regulate, investigate and prevent vote-buying, he said. The EC is also authorised to endorse the election result and punish candidates who commit unlawful acts, he said.

The EC will have five members, who will have a six-year term in office. The EC commissioners must have experience in holding elections but should not be members of any political party. They must have been out of a political position for more than five years before applying to be a commissioner, he said.

The EC commissioners will be selected by a committee, whose members will include judges, MPs and educators. The Senate would be authorised to endorse the EC Commissioners, he said. The CDC yesterday also considered the issue of the anti-corruption body but has not yet made any decision on its role and authority, Lertrat said.

Meanwhile, the CDC chairman Borwornsak Uwanno yesterday defended the decision to allow a non-elected MP to be chosen as prime minister.

He said only 22 countries had made it clear in their constitutions that the position of head of government is reserved for members of the House of Representatives. More than 70 countries having the parliamentary system of governance did not fix such an eligibility criterion, he said. “We don’t have any hidden agenda to make any particular person who is not an elected member of the House of Representative the premier, but we have to look at our own social landscape,” he said.

“We all know that the May 22 coup was caused by a deadlock, as the previous constitution did not allow a candidate outside Parliament to resolve the political impasse,” Borwornsak said.

Thailand has tried many ways to decide the qualification of the person who would be the head of government. The 1978 and 1991 constitutions provided that the Senate Speaker could propose anybody for the post of prime minister. The May 1992 bloody uprising stipulated that the prime minister must be an elected MP and the person proposing the name should be the House Speaker because both persons were elected by the people. “That is the reason why our 1997 Constitution stipulated that only a member of the House of Representative could be the prime minister,” said Borwornsak, who was then a key member of the constitution drafting council.

The 2007 Constitution also set the same criterion for premier, he said. But there was a political deadlock when a group of street protesters called on His Majesty the King to pick any non-MP to replace the elected prime minister who the protesters did not want.

However, HM the King could not accept their request as the constitution did not authorise him to do so, said Borwornsak, who had also joined the protests last year.

“The members of the drafting committee have heavily debated this issue and believed that in a normal situation parties who win an election and members of the Lower House, who are all elected persons, would not bring an outsider to lead their government,” he said.

The new constitution will make it clear that the House Speaker, who must be elected by voters to the House, would be the person who would propose the name of the prime minister for royal endorsement, he said.

Borwornsak said the CDC promised not to expose the country’s main institutions – nationhood, religion and the monarchy – to any risk like the proposal for direct election of the PM. A directly elected PM and cabinet would make the government too strong and vulnerable to become authoritarian, he said.

“What we have to do is to create an immunised constitution that could solve the problems of our country as well as prevent rich people from controlling political parties and politicians from acting in ways that is contrary to the people’s interest,” he said.

“We proposed the Mixed-Member Proportional [MMP] electoral system with the aim of ensuring the poll result reflects the desires of all people, and allows independent candidates to run in the contest,” he said. “This could help solve the problems.”

He said there was no clarity on the idea of a people’s referendum on the constitution. If the junta wanted a people’s referendum, it would have to amend the interim charter for the purpose, he said.