Since it first took office in 1947, Thailand's Senate has mostly comprised appointees as mandated by more than a dozen constitutions over the past seven decades. Only in the 1997 and 2007 charters was the Senate elected and half elected, respectively. The 2017 constitution has reverted to a wholly appointed upper chamber but this time the 250-member Senate has been given wider authority, particularly the selection of the prime minister.
Under the direct supervision of the military junta, the process of appointing this lot of senators is the most opaque and unaccountable Thailand has seen. Wider powers should come with more transparency and accountability but this is not the case. As a legislative arm of the junta, the already politicised Senate is likely to prove problematic and complicate Thailand's already messy and murky political environment after the March 24 elections for several reasons.
First, the various senatorial bodies in the past were appointed under the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej whose seven-decade reign accumulated immense moral authority. Senators appointed under the previous reign gained implicit legitimacy from the late monarch's pervasive popularity among the Thai people. This popularity has been passed on through the institution of the monarchy to the new monarch, His Majesty the King. If the ruling generals do a poor job of vetting and picking the new Senate appointments, their efforts may reflect equally poorly on a new era.
Second, until the 1990s, public participation in the composition of the upper house was limited. Senate appointments came and went while the Thai people were more preoccupied with lower house elections every now and then. But the political reforms of the 1990s that culminated with the 1997 charter raised public awareness and overall political consciousness. The Senate mattered more to people because it was vested with the authority to appoint officials of the accountability-promoting agencies, such as the anti-corruption commission, the Election Commission (EC) and the Constitutional Court.
As the Senate became democratised and people paid more attention to it, the junta's lack of transparency in appointing the upper chamber is unlikely to be viewed favourably by the public. The lack of public support for the Senate, in turn, will spell challenges for the post-election government, especially if it is led by the junta that appointed the senators in the first place.
Third, the process of Senate selections has somehow been covered up. The 2017 constitution stipulates that six senators are ex-officio chiefs of the three armed forces and the police, along with the supreme commander of the military and the permanent secretary of defence. While another 50 are supposed to derive directly from junta preferences, the other 194 are supposed to come from some kind of a nomination process. In the 1997 and 2007 charter provisions, the chief judges of the Criminal and the Administrative courts, and the Ombudsman played a role but this process appears to be absent this time round.
Suddenly, the list of senators, each of whom will draw a six-digit monthly salary, emerges without prior communication to the public. What we do know from the news is that a host of cabinet members have resigned in anticipation of joining the Senate, simply shifting from the executive branch to the legislature through a junta provision. It was reportedly announced by a deputy minister in a cabinet meeting that "anyone wanting to join the Senate, just say so".
Apart from cabinet members, the Senate will be heavily dominated by serving and retired uniformed officers, reportedly including Gen Preecha Chan-o-cha, brother of junta leader and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who hardly showed up as a member of the outgoing junta-appointed National Legislative Assembly but collected a six-digit monthly legislative salary in addition to what he received from military service. Most of the rest of the senators, each handsomely paid a six-digit monthly wage, will also be chosen from the NLA. In a blatant and shameless fashion, the Senate will more or less be the continuation of the Prayut cabinet, the NLA, and the military in a different shape and form.
Finally, in the coming days, three types of legislators -- constituency MPs, party-list MPs and appointed senators -- will assume office. After the EC has announced the final poll results, the most representative and least controversial component of the whole lot are the 350 constituency MPs. Notwithstanding a handful of controversies, these directly elected MPs hold a firm mandate and political legitimacy. The 150 party-list MPs, however, are contentious because of the EC's calculation in favour of small parties. A dozen or so parties with just one MP each are poised to enter parliament.
The Senate presumably will work with these single MPs and pro-military parties, led by Palang Pracharath, to extend Gen Prayut's tenure as post-election prime minister and prolong the military's role in and supervision over Thai politics.
Despite all of these manoeuvres, any Prayut-led coalition government appears fractious and fragile. The likely opposition, led by the Pheu Thai, Future Forward, and Seri Ruamthai parties, looks stronger in terms of political cohesion and posture than the pro-junta side.
As an effectively hung parliament of sorts takes shape, the Senate will have a lot to answer for. More powerful compared to previous upper chambers but yet more unrepresentative of the Thai people, the Senate is poised to vote the junta leader into top office because he oversaw their appointments. In so doing, the senators should be held responsible and accountable for the eventual political crisis Thailand is likely to find itself yet again in the coming months.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak teaches at the Faculty of Political Science and directs the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.