Critics say CDC’s list for PM hopefuls ‘meaningless’

Their comments came after the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) said it would stipulate that each political party submit a list of five prime ministerial candidates from which Parliament could select a leader.

The winner should win with an absolute majority in the House to take the government’s top job of PM.

The drafters said this system would allow voters to see beforehand who the potential prime minister was. The procedure would also help facilitate public administration during a critical time of power change.

A new prime minister would be elected from a list to replace the embattled one and prevent a political vacuum, they said.

However, political critic Suriyasai Katasila yesterday said that under the old system there was already provision for the prime minister to be replaced with a new one – there was never any prohibition on that. It was nothing new, he said, adding that the drafters were merely complicating the matter unnecessarily.

Suriyasai, who is also the director of Rangsit University’s Thailand Reform Institute, said he was uncertain of the CDC’s intention. Maybe they had wanted the voters to see and consider future prime ministers – but the old system allowed that already, he said.

“Voters knew the party leader or the top party-list candidate would become the government head,” Suriyasai said. He believed the top position would still fall to one of the two major parties. The candidates would be the party members anyway, he said, adding he did not think any outsider would want to risk their reputation and be on the list, given the political heat the country was facing.

He explained that those highly qualified with a good profile would run the election themselves rather than have their name “filling up” the list.

Meanwhile, politicians from the Democrat and Pheu Thai parties – the country’s two largest – agreed that the PM candidate list was meaningless and unnecessary.

Former Democrat deputy leader Issara Somchai said it had always been widely acknowledged that the first person on the party list would become the premier. Personally, he believed that to have each party propose a five-name list would only cause confusion.

If a premier proposal was really necessary, he said one single name should suffice and it should be the party leader. He doubted how a non-leader could run the country when he did not hold power in the party. 

Whether or not the prime minister should be a House member, Somchai said he was not worried. 

He said he understood that a non-elected PM would need to win at least three out of five votes in Parliament. By contrast, an MP candidate would need only an absolute majority, he said.

Somchai said if a candidate could gain three-fifths of the votes, then it meant he was accepted by the House. That would be acceptable, he said.

Pongthep Thepkanchana, a Pheu Thai key member and legal expert, was not impressed with the idea. He said, “Okay, so there are five people on the list. But who exactly is the prime minister?”

The politician said he was worried for the voters. They might like a person on the list – but there was no way to be sure that that person would become the PM. He said voters would just have to take the chance.

As a result, he advocated a return to the old system, in which voting for a party was like voting for its leader to become premier. Phongthep said the system was already a sensible one.