An appointed Senate to prevent another coup? Really?
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Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan recently made two very interesting public pledges that shouldn’t go unnoticed by any political analyst seeking to identify the “Next Big Political Game” unfolding before the return to elections, scheduled for sometim
1. If the six military top brass are made automatic members of the appointed Senate during the five-year provisional period, there won’t be a military coup.
2. Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha and General Prawit himself will
definitely not be candidates for the position of prime minister even if “outsiders” (non-elected MPs) can become prime minister after the next election.
After the senior military man made clear his public stance, the top legal guru, Deputy Premier Wissanu Krea-ngam, lent further weight to the move by offering the following rationale for a fully appointed Senate:
• The appointed Senate will safeguard the constitution, screen legislation, and counterbalance the elected House of Representatives comprising 500 MPs.
• The appointed Upper House must contain 250 members; fewer than that would render the Senate incapable of performing its intended role.
• The Senate should sit for five years as a necessary “transition period” before full-fledged democracy can be launched.
• The 250 senators should be chosen by an independent selection panel.
• The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) wants the constitution drafters to give a quota of six seats for senior state officials who are currently not members of the NCPO. The six are: permanent secretary of defence, the armed forces supreme commander, the Army commander-in-chief, the Navy chief, the Air Force chief and the national police chief.
• The senators do not have the power to nominate or vote to select the prime minister or Cabinet members, but they can order a censure debate to ensure that political officeholders safeguard the constitution and properly implement national reforms initiated by the military regime.
• The appointed Senate won’t become a proxy of the military regime since its membership would also comprise people from various other walks of life.
Left unsaid was that the existence of an appointed Senate would make any attempt to ram through an amendment to the constitution almost impossible without the support of the Upper House, whose role, as has been made quite clear by the powers-that-be, would be to block any move by politicians to change ground rules established by the current power-holders.
The most intriguing feature, of course, is Prawit’s argument that having six top brass in the Senate would pre-empt any future coup attempt.
Is that a thinly-veiled threat? Or is it a proposed quid pro quo, a trade-off, with politicians?
Whatever it is, the implication from the regime’s No 2 man is that, as things stand, a coup cannot be ruled out even after the present administration hands over power to an elected government as dictated by its road map.
It also indicates that whatever definition the NCPO gives to “reform”, it does not include a change in the mentality of military leaders that the top brass remain the “arbiter of last resort” in every political scenario.
General Prawit insists that with the Big Six in the appointed Senate, any misunderstanding between top brass and politicians could be avoided, thereby preventing any group of military officers from taking things into their own hands and using tanks and guns to resolve what they claim is a threat to national security.
But that won’t go down well with most Thai citizens, who were promised that the May 19, 2014 coup was just a necessary detour on the road to genuine democracy – and that things will “return to normal” once the new set of ground rules is established.
This line of argument also runs counter to Premier Prayut’s oft-cited statement that no enlightened soldier would ever want to stage a coup again since the risk is too high and the job of coup leader is a thankless one.
Perhaps it’s just added confirmation that there is no such thing as “the final coup” – or a “good coup”, for that matter.
