ANCHORMAN
ML NATTAKORN DEVAKULA
Reader discretion is advised. The following article is not meant to incite but rather to provoke thought on the dilemma faced by the country in the current political situation. I'm not actually encouraging that we have a coup d'etat!
Part I of II
Barring a solution of compromises of the following kind, the country will find itself at a dead end without much to choose from in terms of exit strategy.
- The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and People's Assembly for Thailand (PAT) leaders and followers are able to come to terms that the Thaksin Shinawatra-backed People Power party-led administration is victorious and will govern the country for the foreseeable future. Being able to come to grips with this reality translates into them moving on to their separate compounds and taking temporary leave from grouping to mobilise as demonstrators.
- Democrats in the Lower House are able to facilitate a smooth amending of the Constitution's organic laws, which most politicians agree are excessively stringent. The half-breed 51% elected and 49% selected Upper House willingly comes to terms on constitutional amendments required by the PPP's victory-engendered mandate. This translates into the Senate's willingness - most especially including hard-core, conservative, appointed members affiliated with the PAD or the PAT, led by Prasong Soonsiri - to amend key portions of the 2007 Constitution so that it would resemble the 1997 Constitution. Remember that constitutional amendments require the consent of at least half of the votes in the Senate and House combined. Therefore, the PPP cannot go it alone.
- Either House quickly endorses and consequently brings to reality a bill that will grant amnesty to 111 former executives of the dissolved Thai Rak Thai party. Meanwhile, amendments are made to the Constitution's organic laws on political parties and elections, so that political parties are not dissolved based only on one member's mistake. Emphasis is made as well on the need to erase paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article 103 of the law on the election of MPs and senators.
Eradication of the ideas behind the Constitution's Articles 68, 237, 261 and 309 would also be more than welcome.
- Through some sort of legal manoeuvring, none of the three parties - Chart Thai, Matchimathipataya or People Power - is dissolved. This may require a sudden epiphany on the part of all sides involved, that going through with such an act could usher in further unrelenting political chaos, on top of the fact that it would be unfair.
- The courts and the Office of the Attorney-General both comprehend the origin of some of the findings made by the military-appointed Assets Scrutiny Committee (ASC), in that the details may contain biases based on personal preference and anti-Thaksin attitude of some of those who are on the ASC panel.
- urther, the ASC unfreezes the more than 65 billion baht of the Shinawatra family's money.
At this point, it is fair to assume that at least three out of the five above-mentioned necessary conditions would not be satisfied. People who sooner or later will be on the streets, led by the same ilk as before the 2006 putsch, simply will not go away. Infighting that is brewing within the Upper and Lower Houses paints a picture of inadequate cooperation and posits a situation where it would become impossible to reach at least a near consensus on much-needed constitution amending. It is not difficult to imagine why a half-appointed Senate would not want to change the Constitution so that the entire Upper House must be elected.
The selected portion of the Upper House, and conservative segments of the Lower House's opposition MPs, largely comprise those who are in agreement with the basic tenets of the 2007 Constitution, which is to take powers away from politicians. Reverting to the one member of parliament (MP) per district (one man, one vote), allowing for non-partisan independent MPs, increasing the number of total MPs, making it convenient to establish political parties and more difficult to dissolve them, nullifying the law which prevents relatives of ministers and MPs from doing business with the government, ending the ban on MPs becoming secretaries and advisers to ministers, doing away with term limits for prime ministers, undoing the gerrymandering job performed by the constitution drafters... these comprise, at this point, only imagined changes for those who miss 1997.
There is no way the current Senate, the opposition and the deep-rooted traditionalists who wrote these laws into place, would not someway or somehow attempt to block these amendments - extremely adapt at legal manoeuvring as they are.
The way the current Constitution's organic laws on political parties and elections have been written, it also for certain puts the constitutional tribunal in a tremendously limited position when it comes to how far they could flexibly interpret the laws on party dissolution.
Unless Parliament is able to pull off a partial scrap or a revamp of the current Constitution in favour of some draft that reflects the more politically liberating tone of the previous charter, or at least amend it so that it looks like such, the disaster that was the Sept 19, 2006 coup d'etat can only be undone - in a comprehensive sense - by another power grab.
Tell me I did not just write that! Do we really want to head down this road?
The second part of this article continues next week.
The writer is a news analyst.
Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Next
