PM candidates must be listed before polls, CDC panel says

A CHARTER drafter’s sub-panel proposed yesterday that political parties must submit the names of their prime minister candidates during an election campaign in order to give voters a clear idea of who would lead the country if the party won the election. 

This would give voters prior notice of who would become the premier after parliament is established, Supachai Yavaprabhas said to the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) yesterday, representing the subcommittee studying executive structure of which he is the first vice chairman.

The list, consisting of one to five candidates registered with the Election Commission, would also be the source for picking a new PM should the country go through a political crisis, he proposed.

Some of the CDC members agreed with the proposal. A CDC member said the PM candidate list was like indirectly electing the PM. He added that the list would prevent parties from selecting any prime minister candidate at will without prior notice to the voters.

“This will help voters to consider carefully before casting their ballots. Now you [voters] cast only one vote for a constituency MP, party’s popularity, and a PM,” he said. 

Different parties could propose the same names for voters to consider, the CDC said. When small parties have the same eminent names on the list as big ones, it would be recognisable to voters that they were nominee parties, Supachai said, stressing it was an upside of the method.

The commission also discussed public concerns over a non-MP prime minister. A high-profile CDC member suggested that people should get over that or the country wouldn’t go anywhere. He implied that it was never a necessity or a strict requirement that the government head be selected from the MPs. A couple of drafters supported the same idea, explaining the premier would be voted by the House of Representatives anyhow.

It was not imperative that the prime minister be an MP, they said, elaborating that in Thailand such a notion became prominent and grew out of the public distrust. In 1992, an outsider was elected by MPs to become the prime minister, they said. The constitutions following that, consequently, stipulated out of the lack of faith that PM must come from among MPs to prevent a similar crisis, they explained.

In principle, it was perfectly acceptable to have a non-MP prime minister, they stressed.

A CDC member remarked further that the proposed method not requiring an MP to be the premier should also go well with the Mixed Member Apportionment (MMA) electoral system.

Under the MMA system, a party might not have party-list MPs if it already had constituency MPs proportional to its popularity calculated when usually the PM was the first name on the party-list. The new PM selection method could be a solution to such a possibility, a drafter said.

The advocates also said that this method would take Thai democracy to a whole new level as voters would know who the potential PM is before casting their ballots. However, Supachai, who was a political scientist from Chulalongkorn University, pointed out its originality could be a possible weakness of such a PM selection because people might be confused.

Involved agencies would have to work hard to create understanding among the public, he said, adding it was quite similar to the party-list system where it was widely understood the first person on the list was the potential prime minister.

Besides, each party must have the consent of those they put on the list. A CDC member raised the point that small parties might be at a disadvantage when they were incapable of recruiting eminent figures for the PM candidate.