The Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) will ask the military regime to track down a group suspected of masterminding an operation to distort the draft constitution as the Aug 7 referendum on the draft is approaching.
CDC chairman Meechai claimed Thursday that during a draft charter publicity campaign in Chiang Mai on Monday, the CDC found documents that looked like a summary of key issues of the draft constitution distributed by the CDC to the public.
The documents use the same covers as those of the CDC's draft charter summaries but their contents are different, Mr Meechai said.
- Earlier report: Fake copies of charter found
The documents are similar to those distributed by students from the New Democracy Movement group during a previous CDC session to explain the draft charter at the government complex on Chaeng Watthana Road, Mr Meechai said.
The CDC is checking the documents to determine if they distorted the contents of the draft constitution and will forward the matter to the Election Commission (EC) for a further probe, Mr Meechai said.
The CDC will also discuss the issue with the National Council for Peace and Order and the EC to find out where the documents came from, Mr Meechai said.
He said he believed the students could not have the money or resources to publish and distribute large numbers of documents alone, and there may be someone providing them with funding.
On Wednesday, CDC spokesman Amorn Wanichwiwatana also revealed that there was a group of people trying to distort information on the draft charter.
He described them as "ant armies" set up to spread false information by word of mouth in villages and communities to avoid breaking the referendum law.
Mr Amorn said the CDC got hold of more than 100 such documents during its charter publicity campaign in Chiang Mai on Monday. There must be several people involved and someone must have provided financial support for the operation to distort the draft charter and paid for the costs, Mr Amorn said.
Responding to Mr Amorn's comments, red-shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan denied reports of someone funding the operation to distort the draft, saying Mr Amorn was only making up a story. "There were no 'ant armies', but there are only people who disagree with the draft," Mr Jatuporn said.
Meanwhile, Samphan Tangbenjapol, a former Democrat Party MP, said the EC has not done enough to publicise the draft charter as the Aug 7 referendum is approaching.
He said he has received complaints from people that less than a month is left before they will go to vote in the referendum, but they still do not know anything about the draft charter.
Many have not yet received the summaries of the draft charter intended for distribution nationwide, Mr Samphan said, adding that the CDC's volunteers who are trained to explain the draft have not shown up in their villages.
CDC spokesman Chartchai Na Chiang Mai, who heads the CDC's subcommittee on public relations, said yesterday that the subpanel met representatives of the Interior Ministry to discuss ways to boost the public's understanding of the draft charter through the volunteers drawn from teachers. The meeting was chaired by deputy permanent secretary for interior Prateep Keeratirekha.
Mr Chartchai admitted that several villagers had not received the summaries of the draft charter, and said the CDC is trying to come up with a new approach by condensing nine important features of the draft charter onto A4-size paper.
