After three-plus months of political uncertainty, Thailand finally got a new prime minister when Pheu Thai Party candidate Srettha Thavisin won parliamentary approval with 485 votes from a joint sitting of both Houses on Tuesday, with several votes from the Senate. Prompt royal endorsement permits him to kickstart the top job in a very short time.
Each side cited the need for the country to move on as a reason to give the businessman-turned-politician the nod, with the new government being dubbed as a depolarising one.
Despite a few feel-good narratives from elected lawmakers in the coalition justifying the unlikely political amalgamation, few are optimistic, especially when several fundamental problems remain.
The elephant in the room is the aftermath.
It's evident that the junta-sponsored 2017 constitution contains unfair mechanisms that blatantly breach democratic principles, and charter reform is a fundamental issue for the health of the nation's democracy.
However, a few developments regarding charter amendments are a concern.
To begin, a campaign for charter rewriting initiated by pro-democracy and civic groups, which aims to secure public rights to pose questions in the charter referendum, hit a snag after the Election Commission (EC) accepted only campaign forms in paper while rejecting those digitally made. This has resulted in some 40,000 of 50,000 forms becoming invalid.
The EC cited a technicality in rejecting the electronic forms, saying as an independent agency, it's not obliged to abide by the rules of the Electronic Performance of Administrative Functions Act.
While this is probably true, it's disappointing that the EC has had no interest in properly communicating with the civic groups at the beginning of the campaign.
According to Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw) -- one of the pro-democracy and civic groups -- they tried to consult with the EC several times about the submission system, but the agency was ambiguous until the Aug 25 deadline approached. Now, iLaw and its allies have only two days to collect 40,000 signatures on paper to replace the dumped digital ones.
How the poll agency proceeded with this matter has given the impression that it may have had an ulterior motive. But the EC is certainly not alone.
Worse is the non-committal stance of Pheu Thai leader Cholnan Srikaew regarding charter rewriting. Dr Cholnan told parliament shortly before the premiership voting on Tuesday that the party's promise of charter rewriting was anything but election campaigning content.
While he stopped short of elaborating, his rebuttal statement raises suspicion that Pheu Thai is about to renege on its promises regarding the charter.
If true, this would come as no surprise. Many remember how Pheu Thai failed to do enough in pushing for a charter rewrite in the past parliamentary term. In short, while presenting itself as a pro-democracy party, it placed its interests before principles.
Dr Cholnan must know that Pheu Thai has disappointed its supporters by dumping the Move Forward Party to form a coalition with the parties linked to military leaders in the 2014 coup. This move may cost it a substantial part of its support base in the next election.
Now that it has become the coalition leader, Pheu Thai has full power to ensure a better charter. It must give it its best shot or the party may just need to prepare for the worst.