The opposition People's Party demanded the government treat the 2017 constitution rewrite as an urgent policy.
Since the charter rewrite was hardly mentioned and given low priority in the government's policy statement, the opposition doubts if the promised changes will ever happen, the party said on Thursday.
People's Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut said if the government cannot make the charter rewrite a priority, he will ask Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to stop reading from her script and tell him in her own words why not.
He was speaking on the first day of a two-day joint sitting of parliament, dedicated to the government's policy statement and the parliamentary debate on it.
Mr Natthaphong demanded the government reclassify the charter rewrite as an urgent policy and push the matter ahead, along with four amendment bills proposed by the People's Party.
Unlike the policy statement delivered by former prime minister Srettha Thavisin in September last year which listed the charter rewrite as one of his administration's five urgent policies, the charter rewrite did not figure highly in the statement delivered by Ms Paetongtarn on Thursday.
This time around the statement simply said the government would expedite the work of drafting a people's version of the constitution and make it as democratic as possible without giving much detail.
Phuthita Chaianuan, a People's Party MP for Chiang Mai, described the 2017 constitution as a ticking political time bomb which allows judicial activism and the military to exert too much power over the government and the people.
"This problem is evident but the government dares not even [clearly] talk about it," said the MP.
"Why on earth does the charter rewrite now come after middle- and long-term policy categories? And why does the government dare not pledge when to begin and finish it?"
Worse still, she said, previously promised public participation in the promised charter rewrite, from designing the charter referendum question to drafting the new constitution, had simply disappeared from the new policy statement.
"This makes me seriously doubt if the public will be allowed to take part in the charter rewrite, whether a new charter drafting assembly will be elected by voters and if the promised charter rewrite will ever happen," she said.
The PM delivered her policy statement in parliament on Thursday morning.
It focused on measures to improve people's financial status and increase state income.
