The Democrat Party will ask the Constitution Court to consider the legality of the government's 2-trillion-baht borrowing bill to fund transport development after the Senate passes it.
In an exclusive interview with the Bangkok Post yesterday, Deputy Democrat leader Korn Chatikavanij said his party strongly believed the bill violated the constitution and would lead to corruption.
Regarding its constitutionality, Mr Korn explained that the constitution permitted a special borrowing law only to serve an urgent requirement of money. But the transport development scheme could actually be realised with normal annual budgets of the state.
He said the constitution required any normal spending of the government to undergo scrutiny under the budget-related laws of the country.
Mr Korn noted that the government did not need to pursue such a huge loan bill that will create a heavy and long-term financial burden for the people.It is reported that the 2-trillion-baht loan bill will cause the country to repay altogether 5 trillion baht over 50 years.
"If the Constitution Court allows the government to issue the law, every future government will not need to work hard to issue a budget law," Mr Korn said.
"It need not prepare boxes of documents to seek approval from a budgetary committee. It is better to issue just a four-page law with 19 sections and receive a blank cheque to cash it for the enormous amount of money for any spending."
The deputy Democrat Party leader said the government was determined to accomplish the borrowing and planned to spend as much as 40 billion baht of the loan sum on paperwork and consultancies.
He doubts any government agency will dare effectively examine the spending. No government officials would object to the desire of the administration to implement the scheme, he said.
Democrat MP for Bangkok Atthawit Suwanphakdi said there are many irregularities in the special borrowing bill. He believes the government wants to avoid thorough scrutiny under the procurement regulations of the PM's Office controlling government budgets.
He pointed out that under the regulations, payment for project consultants must comply with specified criteria for consultancy costs.
Mr Atthawit said during the consideration of the bill, MPs voted to reject a reservation of a parliamentary committee scrutinising the bill on procurements that breach median price criteria. Without the reservation, the scheme can go ahead with no scrutiny at all.
Mr Atthawit also pointed to the government's refusal to add the details of any planned transport projects to the bill, saying that this would allow the government and MPs to change projects at will.
"I believe that this is a blank-cheque project of the government," Mr Atthawit said. "It is not included in the bill and even the project name and its budget are not. This shows that switches of projects can happen anytime. MPs can propose numerous projects without any legal obligation."