Charter drafter Banjerd defends clauses attracting heat in new constitution

THE PUBLIC SEEMS TO HAVE SOME QUESTIONS OVER THE CHARTER DRAFT YOU HAVE CRAFTED, COULD YOU DETAIL THE CORE PRINCIPLE OR THOUGHTS BEHIND THE CRAFTING?

You may have seen that we have divided the charter into four key chapters. One is about the country’s regime, the King, and the people. The second is involved political structures and institutions, the third is about the justice system and state scrutiny, and the last is reform and reconciliation.

You may see now that it is not the same as anything ever written. What’s very new is Chapter 4, which is about reform and reconciliation. In fact, this is the very first and foremost thing, which is fundamental to this charter.

Secondly, we had a commitment with the interim charter, which addresses problems and challenges that we must help resolve with the new charter. Lastly, we looked into the country’s problems and bring them to the table. 

So, you will see that we wrote the charter based on the problems that we have, the commitments that we have, and a wish for a structure we would like to have.

 

WHAT ARE THE “CLASSIC CHARTERS” LIKE, AND HOW DIFFERENT ARE THEY FROM THIS ONE?

Normally, when you write a charter, what would be in it would only be two key elements, one is about rights and freedom of people, and the other is about the political structure, which includes administrative power, legislative, and judicial power. That’s it. 

But what we have done this time is far different from that. In Germany, for instance, if it is an absolute administrative power, what they find to help balance this power is the power of the constitutional court. Or in France, if they find that the government is weak, they design a presidental system to it back up. It’s all about designing political structures to fit their societies. They don’t touch much on the part concerning the people as they enjoy full rights and freedom.

But besides adjusting around these things, we have added two key elements which are unprecedented. One is about active citizens in chapter one, the other is about reform and reconciliation … our country needs to address how we can be good active citizens, which is very basic in a democratic country. And then we move on to the balance of power via the political structure part, state scrutiny, which is also new, and last but not least, reform and reconciliation.

 If you think about what’s wrong with our country, I would like to bring you back [what occurred during] the reign of King Rama V. We had major reform. But since then we have never had such a thing for our society.

As time went by, we have lost the balance of power as it has been centralised. There have been advantages [to this] and there have also been disadvantages. Then inequality has become deep-rooted, and conflicts have erupted like we have seen as a result. So, what we really need is to adjust the balance power. At this point we cannot do that by only adjusting political structures alone any more. We have problems to resolve, and we have to prepare ourselves and fix them via major reform.

 

WITH ALL THOSE THOUGHTS, HOW HAVE YOU TRANSLATED THEM IN THE DRAFTING PROCESS?

Like I have shared with you, we divided the content into four key chapters, maintaining those two classic elements with a degree of adjustment and inclusions in chapter one and chapter two, while coming up with something completely new in chapter four.

“Active citizen”, like I said, can’t be found in any other constitution in the world but ours. 

 

 YOU HAVE DONE A LOT WITH THE SECOND ELEMENT, WHICH IS ABOUT POLITICAL STRUCTURES?

Yes, we have. We have changed the electoral system to a mixed proportional system where party-list votes can really count and help determine the number of people representatives in the House (the nationwide party-list votes would determine the number of party-list MPs each party has. The number of constituency MPs will then be deducted from this number to determine the party list members to be added). In the past the list did not help reflect the real number of seats that political parties should have in the House, but this time it will be really meaningful and shake the system.

For senators, we designed it so they will come for multiple professions as we want them to reflect the reality of society. But as some of them will not come directly from the people, they will not have the power to remove elected representatives of the people. It’s kind of a balance that we designed … to close all the loopholes of power.

For an outsider prime minister, we put it that way as a last option for a political deadlock we have ever experienced. It’s like a fire exit for your house. People may critical over he or she not being the people’s choices, but we have actually tied him or her up with your representatives as they will be the ones who pick him or her.

A part from that, we have laid several mechanisms for checks and balances in Parliament. The most crucial one is impeachment against those found to be corrupt. There is also scrutiny of state budgets to prevent populism as well.

 

PEOPLE HAVE QUESTIONED THE NEW MECHANISM IN CHAPTER FOUR, WHICH IS A REFORM AND RECONCILIATION COMMITTEE. HOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN THIS?

Actually, this chapter was longer than you have seen, but we cut it down as we have removed detail about the reform of a new Act. And we will have another Act to support reconciliation strategies. The new mechanism will drive this with an independent panel it appoints. 

 

AND THIS COMMITTEE WILL HAVE POWER AND PEOPLE HAVE QUESTIONED WHETHER IT WILL OVERRULE THE GOVERNMENT?

Looking back at what we have been through, can you say we are OK, everything is fine? Maybe not. That’s the reason why we need to reform and have mechanisms to help bring us towards that and success. We have met politicians over time, and I will ask whether they would do all this for the country? They didn’t as they were concerned only with votes. So, people may have criticisms but we cannot measure things with the same ruler any more. Things are different now.