Bangkok Post

The agreement was reached at a meeting of the whips on Monday. The opposition whips boycotted the meeting.

Mr Udomdet said it was agreed that the debate on Thursday would be from 9.30am to midnight and on Friday from 9.30am to 8pm.

Government MPs, opposition MPs and senators would each have a total of eight hours to debate the bills. The government would be allowed 90 minutes to propose the charter amendment drafts to the joint sitting of the two houses.

The government, opposition and senate whips were due to meet again on Thursday at 10.30am to make proper arrangements, but the opposition might not participate, he said.

Senate chief whip Nikom Wairatpanich said he did not expect any problems during the two-day debate.

Cholanan Srikaew, secretary of the government whips, said the charter amendment debate would be broadcast live on the state-run NBT television channel.

After the draft amendments were accepted in principle in the first reading, a joint scrutiny committee comprising 45 members - 35 MPs from all political parties and 10 senators - would be set up, Mr Cholanan said.

Opposition chief whip Jurin Laksanavisit (Photo by Apichart Weerawong)

Opposition chief whip Jurin Laksanavisit said the opposition whips did not attend the meeting today because they did not believe that the government would abide by any agreement involving the opposition on how long the sitting should last.

Mr Jurin said House Speaker Somsak Kiatsuranont, the ex-officio parliament president, had earlier said he expected the debate to take only one day.

Mr Jurin said there were many cases in the past in which the government had failed to comply with an agreement made with the opposition and used its majority to abruptly end debates.

He also commented that the government was obviously trying to shorten the charter amendment process.

The Truth for Reconciliation Commission has submitted a letter to House Speaker Somsak urging him to postpone the joint sitting to deliberate the three draft charter amendments until other bills submitted by the people's sector have been examined and verified.

The letter was signed by TRC chairman Kanit na Nakorn.

Mr Somsak has scheduled Feb 23 for the tabling of three draft amendments submitted separately by the government, the Pheu Thai Party and the Chartthaipattana Party.

Three other draft amendments have also been filed by the people's sector, including one by the red shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), with the speaker.

House Speaker Somsak Kiatsuranont (Photo by Pattarachai Preechapanich)

Mr Somsak opted to call a joint sitting to consider the first three drafts on the grounds it would take too long for the other three drafts to go through signature verification.

The TRC said it has looked into all six drafts and found they all want to set up a constitution drafting assembly with the majority of members elected by the people and others selected from experts in various fields. The size of the proposed CDAs ranges from 99 to 379 members.

The commission is of the opinion that it is of the utmost importance that the CDA which is set up is acceptable to people of different political persuasions and ideologies in order to end the conflict in the country.

The TRC suggested that CDA members must represent as many groups of people with as many different political opinions as possible. The number of CDA members in each province should be proportional to the number of eligible voters, meaning that some provinces would have more than one representative on the CDA.

The commission said the method of selecting the CDA should be the same as for the election of senators under the former 1997 constitution.

There should be a process of taking the people's opinions and conducting a public referendum and the period set for completion of the rewriting the constitution should be at least 300 days, not 180 or 240 days as proposed in some of the existing draft amendments, the TRC said.

Since the country is in deep political conflict, a CDA would have to be set up with the strong intention of finding ways of effectively getting out of this situation, not to further the interests of any particular political group, it said.

Mr Somsak said the joint sitting of parliament would decide whether to postpone the deliberation of draft charter amendments as called for by the TRC.

He said it was beyond his power to do this since he had already put the charter amendment on the agenda of a joint sitting of parliament.

Therefore, it was now a matter for the parliament to decide whether to postpone the deliberation of the draft amendments, he said.