Permanent Constitution
In December, the 2,000-member junta-appointed National Assembly elected 200 of its members as candidates for the Constitution Drafting Assembly. The voting was fraught with irregularities. The candidate with the highest number of votes was Okas Tepalakul from Chachoengsao province, a virtually unknown car dealership owner who was a former classmate of junta-head Sonthi Boonyaratglin. BMW Thailand executive Pharani Leenuthapong received the second highest number of votes. The controversial selection also saw Suwit Pipatwilaikul, a little-known Nong Bua Lamphu construction contractor who received the third highest number of votes. There were no representatives of farmers or workers in the final selection. Of the 200 final nominees, the nominee that received the lowest number of votes received just 7 votes. Assembly-member Maj Pol Gen Krerk Kalayanimitr claimed that some votes may have been bought. Of the 200 nominees, 74 were public sector bureaucrats, 34 were academics, 38 were from the social sector, and 54 were from the private sector.
The voting itself was full of irregularities. Members were lobbied in front of toilets and many Assembly-members marked their ballots before entering the polling booths (Normally, voters are handed ballot papers only when they enter the booth). A soldier guarding the entrance to the Parliament stopped a woman carrying 400,000 baht in cash. She refused to say why she was carrying so much money.
In December, junta chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin issued several guidelines for the permanent constitution being drafted by the CNS's drafting body. These included:
- Restricting a Prime Minister to serving a maximum of two terms of office
- Preventing a government from acting as a caretaker administration after dissolving Parliament.
- Making it easier to launch a no-confidence debate against the Prime Minister. Whereas the 1997 Constitution required 200 out of the House's 500 MPs to launch a no-confidence debate against the Prime Minister, Sonthi demanded that 100 MPs be sufficient.
He also made several suggestions, including:
- Transforming the Senate from an all-elected body in order to prevent relatives of politicians from being elected and thus perverting the non-partisan intent of the 1997 Constitution.
- Allowing politicians to switch political parties at any time. The 1997 Constitution required that any candidate for the House belong to a political party for 90 days before the registration date for an election.
- Banning the merger of political parties.
Sonthi later denied dictating the content for the new constitution, but stated "We can't force them to do things but responsible people will know what the constitution should look like."
Read more about this topic: 2006 Interim Constitution Of Thailand
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