The King Prajadhipok's Institute has made a sensible move by not immediately withdrawing its controversial report on national reconciliation but instead giving the parliament another chance to reconsider whether it really wants to selectively make use of the report to suit its political agenda.
The KPI on Tuesday proposed the House committee on reconciliation chaired by former coup maker Gen Sonthi Boonyaratkalin ask the House merely to acknowledge the report.
It also suggested he extend the term of his panel until at least the end of the next parliamentary session so they can call public meetings and seek feedback on the report, including its proposed prescriptions for reconciliation.
The KPI also pleaded with the Opposition to engage in constructive dialogue to find a solution to Thailand's long-standing political divide.
The KPI warned that if the government decides to ram the report through with its majority vote, the country could descend into deeper and more violent conflict leading to what it described as a "war of reconciliation" to establish a justice of the victor.
The institute's latest remarks echo concerns expressed earlier by the research team which wrote the report, after it found out that the Sonthi committee used its majority vote to endorse the report and to selectively adopt certain reconciliation prescriptions against the team's will.
The chosen prescription seeks a general amnesty for political leaders and their supporters, government officials and security forces involved in political disturbances since 2005 and also the nullification of all cases investigated by the defunct Assets Scrutiny Committee.
The Sonthi committee has backed down on the use of a majority vote to endorse the report but has refused to withdraw the report from parliament.
Gen Sonthi claims his job as the committee chairman is over, and it now depends on the House to decide what to do with the report.
That's a great pity for a man responsible for staging the coup and who now appears to wants to redeem himself of his past misdeeds.
Gen Sonthi must have realised the coup he staged on Sept 19, 2006 to oust the Thaksin Shinawatra government was a blunder, because it did not solve the country's political conflict.
Nor did it get rid of widespread corruption in the state bureaucracy. Pitifully, he has failed to realise that there is no quick fix to the country's colour-coded political conflict even if most of us, the general included, have wanted reconciliation to happen quickly.
The reconciliation prescription that his committee culled from the KPI report will never lead to the reconciliation he desires.
The House or, to be more specific, the Pheu Thai Party which has a majority vote in the House, can right the wrong committed by the Sonthi committee by heeding the KPI's pleas to merely acknowledge the report and to allow the study to be discussed more extensively and with greater participation from all stakeholders. If it is serious about reconciliation, it will want to invite feedback from as wide a range of people as possible, not a limited circle of parliamentarians.
Or it can choose a chaotic and destructive path by doing just the opposite.
Hopefully, common sense still prevails over partisan interests among our legislators, both in the government and the opposition camps.