What's the hurry? Reconciliation can't be a rush job

The warnings have come from such institutions as the King Prajadhipok’s Institute (KPI) and the Truth Commission for National Reconciliation. But judging from official comments from the power-that-be, the advice is not being heeded. Further political tension is lurking around the corner – yet again.
Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit has shot down a proposal to hold a series of public hearings on how best to achieve national reconciliation. He insists that organising a nationwide debate on the issue would merely “waste time” and delay the implementation of unity efforts.
His argument, a favourite stand of any party with a majority in the House, is that Parliament is already a “key mechanism” through which the public voice can be measured. In his own words: “It is impossible for all 60 million Thai people to have their own say on the proposals. In any case, their representatives are already in Parliament.”
That means he has tossed aside concerns from certain quarters that any move that smacks of the “tyranny of the majority” in Parliament could ruin respect for the minority.
Besides, with most Thais getting increasingly sceptical about whether their MPs really represent their own real thinking, any attempt to force the issue to a conclusion within a short period of time could spark another national catastrophe.
Pheu Thai was initially trying to ram through the KPI’s recommendations with a majority vote, prompting the KPI research team to issue a series of statements warning that politicians must not exploit only particular parts of the paper to suit their own political agenda.
And that thinly-veiled purpose was obviously to use the segment in the KPI report suggesting that the work of the committee set up after the 2006 coup – which probed and confiscated some of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra’s assets – be declared null and void.
In fact, the KPI academics became so alarmed that their work was being used to promote the ruling party’s cause that they threatened to “withdraw” the report if the House was to vote on it immediately.
The KPI wanted the House committee to delay any voting on the issue until after the general public had been given a chance to debate its pros and cons.
It was at this juncture that the Truth Commission, headed by Dr Kanit na Nakhon, released its third report to Premier Yingluck Shinawatra with another stern exhortation: Don’t rush the reconciliation process with a majority vote or else the country could be plunged into a new round of conflicts that could threaten the whole effort to achieve unity.
But Deputy Premier Yongyuth, who chairs a government panel charged with monitoring the Kanit Commission, insisted that the majority in Parliament will determine what to do with the reconciliation proposals based on the KPI report.
The whole exercise is obviously getting messier every day. The ruling party, it seems, is bent on using the KPI report to push through its own version of national reconciliation, despite the fact that the academics who had carried out the research themselves are saying that Pheu Thai should not proceed without referring to a broader base of public opinion.
The KPI researchers made it clear that they would withdraw the study if the House forwarded its proposals for Cabinet consideration, since such a move could spark a “war of reconciliation” and that it would end up being a case of “justice for the victors”.
To add insult to injury, the government is also set to rush the constitutional amendment motion into the House while the controversy over the “reconciliation war” is still looming large. Critics see the two moves as a two-pronged political assault on the part of the ruling party to help former premier Thaksin to return to Thailand as a man free of any criminal charges.
The speed with which these parallel moves are being forced through the legislative body has triggered a sudden rise in the local political temperature.
Unless the Pheu Thai Party steps on the brakes to slow things down to show its respect for opposing views over these highly inflammable issues, the next crisis is just around the corner.