PM-candidate list 'must' for parties eyeing premier's seat

This is a revision to the previous proposal that each party must submit a list of five candidates. A non-MP or “outsider” could be prime minister. But the spokesman insisted it was up to the parties to decide whom they would propose, not the drafters.

Parties that opted for proposing the PM list must follow three conditions, he said. First, they must have a permission letter from the candidates. Second, candidates must be constitutionally qualified to take up Cabinet seats. Last, candidates could not be proposed by more than one party or they would be voided.

The development came as drafters were completing clauses under the chapter on Parliament yesterday. They confirmed their previous proposal that the lower house would be made up of 500 members, of whom 350 would be elected from constituencies while the rest would be party-list MPs. They would serve a four-year term.

Additionally, the first parliamentary session could be opened when there were no fewer than 475 members, or 95 per cent of the total number of MPs.

More important, Norachit noted that parties could only have party-list MPs when they fielded constituency ones. The same people could not run for both systems, and party members must have a part in deciding who would be on the parties’ list, he added.

For a constituency candidate to win a poll, he or she must not only gain more votes than other candidates but must also have more votes than “no votes”. Should “no vote” be the most polled in a constituency, a by-election must take place and parties must field different candidates to run, the spokesman explained.

He further said that should a by-election result from electoral fraud, the votes gained in that poll would not be used to calculate the total parliamentary seats of a party. If the by-election was successful and it turned out to decrease the MP seat number, the last person or people on the party-list should be removed from the House to make sure it had no more than 500 MPs.

Also, in the case of fraud during a by-election, the investigation process must be finished within one year of the national election, Norachit said.

Apart from that, the drafters also discussed the qualifications and disqualifications of MPs.

Following the 2014 interim charter’s Article 35 that politicians must be morally upright, the CDC resolved yesterday that candidates’ political rights must not have been revoked, and they should not have been declared bankrupt or jailed in the previous 10 years counting from the application date. 

The drafters also included disqualification of district and village headmen with that of MPs.

Norachit explained: “If they did not have the district or village headmen’s qualifications, they should not be MPs or ministers.”

Another qualification of an MP, the spokesman said, was that he or she must not have been fired from governmental organisations for malpractice. 

Norachit clarified that former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva would not be disqualified, though.

Abhisit had presented fake documents to apply for a military lecturer’s job and got the rank of sub-lieutenant. The CDC spokesman said presenting fake documents was not a “malpractice”.

In the case of another former prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, he also said she would not be disqualified after she had served her five-year electoral-rights ban after being impeached.

Meanwhile, CDC head Meechai Ruchupan stood firm that the panel was not making the Constitutional Court a “super body” through giving it the power to rule over the contentious Article 7.

“On tasking the court with judging the ruling tradition under democratic regime with the constitutional monarchy as stipulated in Article 7, we see that in the past that although it has been written in the Constitutions, they never said which body would do the job.

“Then the 2014 interim charter stipulated that the Constitutional Court should do that, and we agree. So we include in the Constitutional Court chapter that when no articles in the charter could work, it should rule in accordance with the ruling tradition,” Meechai explained.

The CDC was only making it clear, not giving the court more power, he stressed, adding that rather it would have more responsibilities because there are more qualifications of political-office holders.

The Constitutional Court is the most appropriate body to make those decisions, he said.

Because the court has always been dragged into political conflict, the CDC chief said drafters were trying to improve qualifications of judge candidates.