Staunch royalist and conformist Senator Somchai Sawaengkarn recently complained about he and his colleagues' failed attempts to make the amendment of the 2017 military-sponsored constitution more difficult.
In a Facebook post on Friday night, Mr Somchai listed some of those failed attempts, in the form of reservations to proposed constitutional amendments, which were all voted down in parliament.
These include the proposed change of the majority from three-fifths to two-thirds of members of the Senate and House needed to endorse charter amendments in the first and third hearings; mixed composition (selection and election) of the 200-member Constitution Drafting Committee instead of all 200 being elected by the people; incorporating 38 sections related to the King's powers, scattered in the charter, into one chapter in a new charter to be drafted by the CDC, and that CDC members not be allowed to hold political posts for two years.
But despite these failed attempts, Senator Somchai and Palang Pracharat MP Paiboon Nititawan, also a staunch royalist, recently sprang a surprise by submitting a motion in parliament requesting it ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the legitimacy of attempts by the government and opposition parties to rewrite the charter through the CDC. The motion was approved by parliament, thanks to the overwhelming support of the military-backing senators.
To deliberate this complicated legal issue, the court has sought opinions from four experts in the field, namely Meechai Ruchupan, the architect of the 2017 constitution; Bovornsak Uwanno, former secretary of the Constitution Drafting Committee which crafted the so-called 1997 People's Constitution, and two other constitutional experts, Udom Rat-amarit and Somkid Lertpaiboon.
The nine-member Court is due to meet on March 4 to consider the motion by Mr Somchai and Mr Paiboon. A ruling is expected on March 10.
Mr Udom, one of the constitution experts, said rewriting the whole charter by means of amending Section 256 to pave the way for the setting up of the CDC is not legally possible without the prior consent of the people who endorsed the charter in a referendum three years ago. He said the true spirit of Section 256 is to allow the charter to be amended section by section, not all at once, which he likened to "tearing up" the whole document.
Mr Udom claimed that nowhere in this world has a constitution been crafted in order to be rewritten in its entirety. In his opinion, he said the only possible way to rewrite the charter is to hold a referendum to ask the people whether they agree with the move or not.
It has been agreed by government and opposition parties, except the Move Forward Party, that the current charter will be rewritten by the CDC without touching two chapters, Chapter 1 concerning general provisions, including Thai sovereignty and its constitutional monarchy, and Chapter 2 which is solely about the monarchy.
The MFP wants the monarchy to be reformed through constitutional amendments in line with demands of the anti-establishment Ratsadon group.
But their goal is unlikely to be achieved due to stiff resistance from pro-monarchy groups such as Thai Pakdee and the military, particularly in wake of the weakening of the Ratsadon group due to internal conflict and a lack of popular support.
As the Constitutional Court judges are mostly conformists and handpicked by the military junta, the likelihood is that they will vote down the attempt to rewrite the charter via the CDC.
That means that government and opposition parties will revert to amending the charter section by section -- a time-consuming process. In the meantime, the government can sit back and feel comfortable with over 200 senators still in its pocket.
Whatever, the flawed charter must be amended before the next election to sweep away unfair rules designed to ensure there could only be one result, such as the appointment and empowerment of partial senators and the distorted way of calculating seats in the House.
However, a section-by-section rewrite, a clear delaying tactic, has one major drawback: it may provide a pretext for the anti-establishment movement to regroup and renew its protests in a more forceful fashion.
Veera Prateepchaikul is former editor, Bangkok Post.