No all-powerful body in charter: Meechai

He said the mechanisms would appear in the provisional chapter.

Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) chairman Meechai Ruchupan attested that no entity would hold superior power over elected governments. 

“When an election takes place and the country has a government, the National Council for Peace and Order [NCPO] has to go,” he said yesterday after a constitution draft presentation at Debsirin School in Nonthaburi. 

“Many are interpreting the [Cabinet’s] proposal as suggesting the inclusion of some extraordinary mechanisms that could overrule elected governments. But I do not see it that way. I see that the mechanisms mean prescribing conditions or rules for future governments to follow.”

In response Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha’s desire for a five-year transitional period before a return to full democracy in order to create a political equilibrium, Meechai said that it was about completing the reform process.

“Transitory provisions will lay down clearly which reform agendas must be carried out and for what purposes and aims,” he said. “A timeframe will also be set as to when the reform must be completed. It will also stipulate if the reform is not pursued, punishment will follow.”

Conflict-solving mechanisms were included in the charter draft, he said. “It’s just that nobody has worked them out yet,” he said.

Meechai met Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam on Wednesday, when the latter noted that if drafters included transitory clauses they should have flexibility to grant exceptions to constitutional provisions during the transitional period, as suggested by the Cabinet.

The drafters had already made the transitory clauses flexible, Meechai said, adding that they would have to deliberate on how to adjust the draft to make it less harsh.

He confirmed that the National Legislative Assembly and National Reform Steering Assembly called for a junta-appointed Senate, but CDC had not dealt with related clauses yet and was still figuring out how to fulfil everyone’s wishes. 

“We will see what we can do about it. But if we do not adjust it [as requested], there would be trouble. So, we will have to think about it,” Meechai said.

The CDC chairman did not respond when asked to react to fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s remark that the charter draft was something that could have been written in North Korea.

But he lamented that he was an ill-fated man to have to write a charter in such a difficult time.

However, he insisted that every country needed rules and expressed confidence Thailand would move in the right direction if the charter draft were enacted.

 Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva called on the Cabinet to explain its call for an exception to the rule of enforcement as many people viewed this as an attempt by the junta to hold on to power.

Abhisit said that if the NCPO was afraid that post-election governments might abuse their power, there should be a preventative mechanism.