Charter reform process starts to look sinister

When the yet-to-be-elected Constitution Drafting Assembly goes into action and ponders what Thailand’s highest law should look like, it will face two major challenges. The first one is inevitable. The CDA will have to decide whether to keep the current constitutional protection for the legal consequences of the 2006 coup. Without addressing this coup issue, there would be not much left to change in the present charter, and that would mock the very existence of the CDA itself.

The second challenge is not so inevitable. At least it seems that way at the moment. The question whether the current checks and balances system is relevant and thus should be reformed has never featured much in political debate. Until last week, of course, when a government MP strongly suggested that the likes of the Constitution Court and the Administrative Court should be dissolved and come under the normal court of justice. In other words, Watana Muangsook was seeking to overhaul a system prescribed under the 1997 Constitution that his party’s ultimate patriarch, Thaksin Shinawatra, advocates, at least publicly.

So, what is happening? The ruling Pheu Thai Party is not paying much public attention to what a newspaper called a “charter blueprint” proposed by Watana. But despite our political naivety, we have learned enough to know that what is said in public can be the opposite of what takes place behind the scenes. Is Watana inadvertently letting the cat out of the bag on the ruling camp’s “secret agenda”? This question, according to Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung, smacks of contempt for the CDA whose most members will be directly elected by the people. There’s a clear line, however, between contempt and scepticism.

Should we be sceptical, as Watana’s “blueprint” came hot on the heels of Thaksin singing his praises during a call via Skype to the red shirts? Maybe Thaksin’s remark that Watana made a very strong argument during the first reading of the charter amendment bills matters less than the fact that the two courts have been far from famous with their assessment of the political conflict. Although the Constitution Court let Thaksin off the hook in a murky verdict in 2001 on the share concealment case, rulings following the 2006 coup hampered his attempts at political return. The Administrative Court, meanwhile, kept in check ambitious and controversial business policies of pro-Thaksin administrations, although a Democrat-led government was also rattled by a verdict that froze parts of the Map Ta Phut industrial estate for months.  

Make no mistake. The two courts have caused political turbulence, big and small. But they came into existence for good reasons and once were essential parts of a formidable mechanism that struck fears into corrupt politicians who could not tell national interests from their own. A senior Democrat, who was an influential power broker in the 1990s, was banned from politics for failing to explain a small “debt” in his asset declaration report. Big-name election runners were disqualified left and right for vote-buying.

The weakening of the independent anti-corruption mechanisms coincided with Thaksin’s rise to power. Yet after he was ousted in the 2006 coup, that was followed by years of political turmoil, and Thaksin somehow became the most vocal mouthpiece for the 1997 “People’s Constitution”, whose anti-corruption principles survived the military’s takeover and were included in the present charter. On various occasions, Thaksin expressed proclaimed wishes to see the 1997 Constitution re-installed in its totality.

Watana’s “blueprint” and Thaksin praises of his constitutional views, has thus raised many eyebrows. To add to the intrigue, Watana belongs to the ruling camp, which always told the public it would stay away from the charter reform process. The planned setting up of the CDA was in fact intended to create an impression that the ruling camp would not have its hands on any controversial change to the charter.

If “hands-off” is an image that the ruling camp is trying to project, it’s a shaky image at best. Watana and his criticism of an independent checks-and-balances mechanism are further reason to question what the ruling party’s real intentions are. Whether ‘shaky’ will turn into ‘fragile’ will depend largely on how the drafting assembly goes about its unenviable job.