Reconciliation 'not sole aim of charter'

“Reconciliation must begin with repenting, recovering from, and not repeating past mistakes,” he said.

He added that there were three key areas that needed to be tackled in order to achieve lasting reconciliation: Short-term problems; social issues contributing to political strife like inequality and injustice; and political problems.

“There has been political strife and struggle since the implementation of the 2007 constitution up until last year. Do we want this to be repeated? Do we want to just have an election and revive the conflict? This cannot continue; it has been dragging the society backwards, hence a reconciliation section must be included in the charter,” he said.

Meanwhile, Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) member Anek Laothamatas suggested a “coalition government” as a possible solution for the country to achieve unity.

Although he refused to clarify what he meant by “coalition government”, it is speculated that Anek may have referred to a coalition government involving the two key political opponents – Democrat Party and Pheu Thai Party.

Anek said: “Thailand may not fully recover [from the political strife] but we will do as much as we can; it may be necessary to negotiate with various political factions to achieve reconciliation, but the key question is how to bring the two opposing groups together. 

“We must dare to think of a ‘coalition government’. However, this is a delicate matter and I will not talk about it now. We have given it a lot of thought but this is not the right time to discuss it.”  

National Reform Council (NRC) member and political reform committee chairman, Sombat Thamrongthanyawong said that there are currently several organisations that oversee the reconciliation process, such as the National Legislative Assembly (NLA), the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO)’s reconciliation centre and the NRC’s political reform committee. In order to prevent overlapping of their work, the NRC is scheduled in the coming weeks to hold meetings in order to delegate responsibilities to these organisations.

The joint press conference on “reconciliation and national reform” was held yesterday by key charter drafters and NRC members – NRC president Thienchai Kiranan, CDC president Borwornsak, NRC member Sombat and CDC and NRC member Anek.