The National Legislative Assembly (NLA), which overwhelmingly approved the controversial National Parks Bill yesterday, has again shown that it does not care about public sentiment.
Such arrogance is unacceptable.
The days are numbered for the coup-installed body but it has been rushing in recent weeks to ram through laws with content that transgresses human rights, causing grave concern.
It has deliberated more than 506 bills since it started work on July 31, 2014, with 419 of them having been passed into law as of Feb 25.
The NLA drew flak last month for approving a revised version of the 1992 Factory Act that will allow small- and middle-sized factories to bypass the normal renewal process for factory licences.
Moreover, it gave the green light last week to a new cybersecurity bill, together with the data protection bill, with 133 members voting in favour and 16 abstaining. Neither bill faced any official opposition.
There is only one bill the NLA has voluntarily withdrawn: the rice bill. This highly contentious piece of legislation was criticised for putting the country's diverse rice strains in danger for the sake of exports.
The NLA backtracked at the last minute. Observers saw this as a result of pressure from the powers-that-be, who feared a loss of popularity ahead of the March 24 elections.
This was cited instead of the assembly wanting to show that it felt the time was right for it to step aside and wait for elected lawmakers to take over, with a checks-and-balance mechanism in place.
The NLA, which is widely seen as a rubber stamp for the military regime, ruled out the prospect of it being immediately disbanded. Instead, it insisted that the charter permitted it to stay in place until the middle of March.
On March 1, Jate Siratharanont, a spokesman for the NLA whip, said the assembly would deliberate the remaining bills until they became law. There are about 20 bills in the pipeline that it wants to see passed, including the national parks bill, which was eventually approved by a vote of 140:1 amid public anger.
On March 6, police rounded up demonstrators who were staging a boisterous protest at parliament while the NLA was vetting the aforementioned bill.
The new law carries heavy penalties, including up to five years in jail and hefty fines for people who collect forest plants, despite wide opposition from conservation activists. Last month, representatives of a farmers' federation in the North petitioned against the bill. But its calls fell on deaf ears.
Missing from the law is the principle of community rights, which would have given forest dwellers a voice in the forest management master plan.
While the NLA endorsed a 1998 cabinet resolution aimed at tackling forest conflicts, it added a special clause on this subject in the appendix to effectively render it useless.
NLA president Pornpetch Wichitcholchai may have been speaking the truth when he said that the assembly had to stay in place for the time being, since the country could not afford to have a political vacuum. But to continue giving the stamp of approval to contentious laws that violate people's rights is something that is profoundly wrong.