UPFRONT : Ideas for new Thai charter raise eyebrows

The Straits Times, February 28, 2007

By Nirmal Ghosh, THAILAND CORRESPONDENT


BACK UP: After taking power last year, the military regime said if the referendum failed to get the new Constitution passed, it would dust off one of Thailand's past Constitutions and use it instead. -- AP

IN BANGKOK - THAILAND is getting a new Constitution - its 18th since absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932 - and the lobbying has begun.

The handpicked drafting panel started work last month, and its charter will be put before a nationwide referendum - possibly sometime in September.

The stakes are huge.

A new Constitution will in effect re-engineer the environment and framework within which Thai politics will play out in years to come.

Some ideas being floated by various groups will be a radical departure from the 1997 charter, which is widely acknowledged as Thailand's most democratic to date.

That charter was abrogated on the night of last Sept 19, when the military rolled out tanks and armoured Humvees in Bangkok to unseat then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Among the ideas publicly floated by officials, academics and members of the Constitutional Drafting Committee are the following:

Limiting the number of terms for prime ministers; deciding whether a prime minister should be appointed rather than elected; whether the senate should be appointed, not elected; whether to reduce the number of seats in parliament and the senate and whether Buddhism should be made the official state religion.

Also, there is a suggestion that the 'sufficiency economy' philosophy should be enshrined in the charter. As espoused by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, it has been described as 'living within one's means'' and 'capitalism with a conscience'.

Many are also interested in what the new Constitution may say about royal succession.

All of the ideas floated so far are controversial. Some, say analysts, are 'trial balloons' floated to gauge public reaction.

Seminars on the new Constitution have proliferated, and there is a growing chorus of concern, not least among political parties, who fear that their wings will be clipped, given the current ruling elite's distaste of politicians and distrust of the rural masses.

In a recent interview with The Straits Times, Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva warned of confusion ahead.

He cautioned that the drafting committee should not overreact and abandon the better provisions of the 1997 charter.

'There were a number of things that Thaksin exploited that have to be fixed; but there were other things that Thaksin used, not abused, which should be kept - such as making politics more clear-cut, more national and more tangible to people' said Mr Abhisit, who was leader of the opposition in parliament during Mr Thaksin's five-and-a-half years in power.

'But there is a bigger problem in the background, which is at one level the power play between the old and new governments, but at another level a clash of ideas which are not clearly spelt out, certainly from the side of the current government.'

He was among three political leaders who attended a forum at Thammasat University last week on the shape of the new Constitution.

Mr Abhisit said: 'The Constitution in itself can't solve the national crisis, and any Constitution which is non-democratic will...create a new crisis.'

At the same forum, Chat Thai deputy leader Somsak Prissanananthakul predicted that the current exercise will not be the last - and that there will be yet another Constitution.

'The voices of the people will demand that,' he said. 'The 100-person Constitution Drafting Assembly is picked by the Council for National Security chief - so let's not talk about democratic spirit. The level of people's attachment is also zero.'

Mr Chaturon Chaisang, acting leader of Mr Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party, cautioned that an appointed Senate may be used to appoint and control a prime minister.

'This is like taking society back to a very backward and old problem,' he said.

He added that as long as there were those who resorted to force to solve political crises, the Constitution would not last.

Mr Abhisit, in a rare essay published in major dailies last week, wrote: 'Each time the drafters have proposed incorporating non-democratic ideas into the Constitution, such as a non-elected prime minister or an electoral system designed to weaken parties and dilute the expression of the will of the people, their opinions have been met with outrage and tension arises.'

Drafting committee chairman Prasong Soonsiri was among 10 experts handpicked for the job late last month.

Commenting soon after, political science professor Michael Nelson of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok said: 'You have a tiny group of elite Bangkokians writing a Constitution, who will then ask the rural majority to approve it in a referendum.'

Some analysts see the referendum as a major bump in the road that could derail the new Constitution entirely.

'Thailand is pretty much on schedule for a return to an elected government, but under what kind of Constitution?' a senior Western diplomat said to The Straits Times.

He felt that the government had not done a good job of explaining its positions, and there was a danger that the new Constitution might fail at the referendum even if it was an improved charter.

'The 16 million people who voted for Thai Rak Thai in the last election, in April 2006, could well vote against it,' he said.

The first signs of a movement to reject the Constitution came last week from coordinator Chotisak Onsoong of the 'Sept 19' anti-coup network, which was largely made up of university students.

The network currently has little traction, but could gain momentum if allied with other groups.

It plans a campaign whose theme will be 'A vote against the Constitution is equal to a vote against dictatorship'.

A group of former Thai Rak Thai members will this week challenge the government by launching a new People's Television (PTV) channel in Bangkok, which they say will be 'a small candle shedding the light of truth'.

Soon after taking power in September last year, the military regime outlined its road map for a return to democracy and said that if the referendum failed to get the new Constitution passed, it would dust off one of Thailand's past Constitutions and use that instead.

That may sound simple, say analysts, but it will be a step back, not forward.