After Sunday's draft charter veto, there have been growing calls for the "good" elements in the Borwornsak edition to be preserved in the new draft.
I say don't bother. Let's not fool ourselves. We have been through so many charter drafting processes to know better.
All previous attempts point to the same conclusion: don't expect any changes when the all-powerful centralised officialdom remains intact. This is because whatever high-minded provisions we succeed in placing in the constitution, they all depend on the mandarins for implementation.
The main violators of people's rights are state authorities. Their top-down policies destroy the environment and sources of local livelihoods. Decentralisation is key to democratic change. To protect central control, state authorities always respond with fierce resistance which goes unchecked That's how the beautiful phrases in all previous charters end up as empty words.
The Borwornsak team took pride in its attempts to strengthen grassroots groups through the setting up of the citizen assembly and morality councils to ensure public participation and transparency in politics. Both were eventually ditched by the junta in the final draft. But had they survived, they would not have worked anyway.
At present, there are many town-hall style councils across the country to protect communities from destructive state projects. They came into being through shared goals. Their leaders won recognition through natural leadership and proven commitment. The former charter drafters, impressed with the movement, believed that formalising and expanding similar groups would lead to grassroots democracy. But it won't. As the officialdom and local mafia networks still call the shots, these councils would have been filled with their cronies.
The Borwornsak draft also paid attention to a decentralised education system and local ownership of natural resources. These rights were already enshrined in previous charters, and spurned by authorities. How can we still think they would be effective when they reappear in yet another draft charter?
This is not to say the Borwornsak charter should be completely ditched. On the contrary. With all its strengths and weaknesses, people should have a final say in a referendum. My point is that we should accept the reality: we cannot solve our problems unless we accept what those problems are. As the country's search for the best constitution continues, we should accept this bitter fact: the lack of an ideal charter is not our country's main problem. Forget the political roadmap talks. Forget the renewed charter drafting. They are mere distractions.
What happened on Sunday should remind us of our political reality: that we are under the full grip of a military dictatorship. The best constitution in the world cannot give us a democracy when the military backed by centralised officialdom refuse to take a backseat. Nor can it defuse inequality and ethnic tensions when the dominant mindset in society is still deeply mired in militarism while condoning inequality itself.
Which brings us to how the Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University dealt with an erotic dance in a hazing ritual. The rector of the former teachers' college did not see the problem as stemming from authoritarianism and militarism. Nor as a cultural endorsement of sexual harassment.
Instead, he blamed it on katoey students and their "overt sexuality" in initiating the inappropriate incident. He even admitted he had tried to screen out transgender students but had faced opposition from other university lecturers. As punishment for the erotic dance, the katoey leaders and other students will be sent to a military boot camp for attitude readjustment.
When someone in his position believes that militarism is the answer to problems arising from militarism -- and he is not alone -- it explains why the military still retains a strong grip on society.
Have I lost hope for the country's future? Not at all. Small changes are carried out everyday by people across the country. There is hope for democracy when villagers dare to stand up against toxic gold mines, big dams, and coal-fired power plants amid military crackdown threats.
There is hope when people continue to get organised to take charge of their communities. When a secondary school student dared tell Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha to his face that making students recite his 12 core values makes no sense, when people do not submit to fear and do what's right, democracy will always have a chance.
Sanitsuda Ekachai is editorial pages editor, Bangkok Post.