The long Songkran holiday provided a much-needed respite from politics for most of us, but the reality is about to return with a vengeance.
The ruling Pheu Thai Party, buoyed by recent successes in the parliament with important bills such as charter amendment legislation and the two trillion baht infrastructure development loan bill, appears determined to ram contentious amnesty legislation through the House at a special sitting this month.
A new round of political confrontation is predicted as political forces in our deeply entrenched political divide will again face off, a certainty which will drive the normally hot April temperatures a few degrees higher.
Suriyasai Katasila of the Green group said that Pheu Thai’s determnation to push through an amnesty bill at the coming extraordinary parliamentary session is a betrayal of public trust. The party earlier instructed Deputy House Speaker Charoen Chankomon to invite all political groups, of whatever colour shade, to participate in public hearings to work out a reconciliation plan acceptable to all.
Mr Suriyasai predicted that if the ruling party succeeds in getting the amnesty bill passed the first reading in the House of Representatives – which it certainly can because of its clear majority – their next step would be to introduce a much more contentious reconciliation bill to exonerate fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra of all charges and convictions and pave the way for his return home.
Samut Prakan MP Worachai Hema, who proposed the amnesty bill, said the issue will be raised in the House the following day, when all Pheu Thai MPs have been told to vote to move the bill forward so that it will be debated in the House on Friday.
The ruling party is confident that Mr Worachai’s bill, which would pardon all yellow-shirt and red-shirt protesters involved in protests in the past few years, except for their leaders, will sail through the House without difficulty, despite predictable opposition from the minority Democrats.
Udon Thani MP Kachit Chainikom, a prominent red-shirt, said that he would propose his own version of an amnesty bill, which would pardon all political offenders, including Thaksin, to the party for consideration on Wednesday.
If Pheu Thai forces amnesty legislation thourgh the parliament, all the unfinished investigations set up to determine the truth about the bloody political protests in recent years will be pointless, and the truth will never be told.
In addition to the amnesty bill there are a few other issues, slightly less contentious, which will further drive up the political temperature.
They include a complaint to the National Anti-Corruption Commission by a group of former charter writers challenging the legiality of the government’s two-trillion-baht loan bill for infrastructure megaprojects, and a petition to the Constitution Court by Senator Somchai Sawaengkarn and others challenging the constitutionality of the government’s attempt to amend the charter.