Our betters of the Constitution Drafting Committee went into last week with a single issue on their minds. It was whether the Thailand of tomorrow should elect its next prime minister like the US and other republics elect their presidents — directly and nationally. The CDC's sub-committee on elections said "yes", great idea.
In less than 100 hours, the main CDC took that idea and stood it on its head. How much better it would be, according to the committee's spokesman, to not even elect a prime minister at all. Just appoint one.
No one was mean enough to say, "You mean like on May 22?" But both these ideas, from the (mostly) men entrusted to bring in a workable, decent constitution for once, got worse public reviews than Sony Entertainment's The Interview bomb.
Both major political parties, every popular newspaper, magazine and TV news outlet, and the man in the street opposed both suggestions. Online opinion — for what it's worth as a credible measure of what the public thinks — was overwhelmingly against both extremes and called for the middle path.
Constitution Drafting Committee chairman Borwornsak Uwanno (Photo by Apichart Jinakul)
CDC chairman Borwornsak Uwanno seemed to have the public pulse, on the idea of a direct election at least.
According to eyewitnesses, he got into a hellacious shouting match behind the CDC's closed doors before he prevailed over the direct-election champion, Sombat Thamrongthanyawong of the National Reform Council. One man who was there in fly-on-the-wall mode told the media the loud and heated exchange was "a, erm, colourful part of the debate".
Regardless, the mainstream was proving itself reliably, cautiously conservative. From media to political parties to internet forums, those who wrote and spoke about the constitution favoured the long-established parliamentary system where voters cast ballots for an MP in their home constituency, and parliament's biggest party or coalition selects a party leader to be prime minister.
There is a pickup load of irony here as well, because people also claim they want a new supreme law that reforms almost all the national bodies in order to wipe out or least mitigate corruption.
Chief among these conservatives is Mr Borwornsak. As the week's quintessential man in the middle (path), he seems unalterably destined to become pilloried whether he manages to keep the old parliamentary system or yields to radical changes. He is doomed to be damned if he has the nerve to embrace massive change, destined to be damned if he keeps it the way it was.
Apart from unpleasantries inside the CDC over how to choose the next prime minister, the major issue became how to choose MPs. It is now obvious that the number of MPs will be reduced, and parliamentary party power will be kneecapped. The reason is the silly stalking horse of "parliamentary dictatorship", the bogeyman hauled out every time factions are either unable or unwilling to adapt to political reality.
So last week, fearful people proposed the next election be held under the very controversial and opaque election method called MMP. It stands for Mixed Member Proportional. That's clear, right? Actually, Germans and Kiwis who already vote under the MMP system mostly have a hard time with the details, and they have been doing it for a few decades. (Other countries, notably Canada, have toyed with it but rejected MMP.)
MMP is a system of one man, two votes. Thais are vaguely familiar with this, because MMP counts from each person a vote for a local MP, and then a vote for a national political party list (or at least its leader). A needlessly unclear mathematical formula then gives some candidates and parties the votes that are cast, but redirects others to small parties.
The 2011 New Zealand election returned a minority parliament of 121 MPs, with the two big parties gaining 59 (National Party) and 34 (Labour) seats. Six tiny parties — Greens, the "patriots" of New Zealand First, Maori, etc — won 28 seats among them and the balance of power.
The stated aim is to give a voice to small, often radical parties. The stated aim in Thailand is to crush the "parliamentary dictatorship" of all the big parties (of which there is one) and return Thailand to the glorious years of coalitions and backroom bickering over which incompetent minor-party leader gets to control a vital ministry because (s)he wants control of the patronage.
The current schedule will bring All of the Above to a head in the hottest month of April, the traditional time for starting major political standoffs. One now can see why the Chinese have long counted as a curse the expression, "May you live in interesting times."