Thailands Democracy in Transition

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Thailands Democracy in
Transition

• Charas Suwanmala

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• Our lessons learnt
• A quick glance on the new constitution

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Our lessons learnt
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During our 75 years of democratization, we had

• 35 years of bureaucratic politics
• 55 years of unstable government, weak political
  institutions, occasionally intervened by militant
  coups, which last year came the last one.
• 5 latest years of extremely strong and stable
  government, but with
• Insufficient check-and-balance mechanism,
• High rent seeking, high political and fiscal
  illusion, and high corruption,
• High degree of civil right violation
• high irresolvable conflicts among groups and
  territories, then lead to the military coups,
• 10 years growing up of direct democracy and
  decentralization, still not sustainable and had
  been weakened by national patronage politics.
• Is democracy still viable in Thailand?

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A quick glance on
our new constitution

• Charas Suwanmala

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We want to achieve four
fundamental areas on
Democratization

• Strengthen the check-and-balance mechanisms
• Enhance direct democracy
• Reinforce and enhance civil rights
• Prevent political illusions and corruptions

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i. Strengthen the check-and-balance mechanisms

• Activate the parliamentary control measures.

• Our new constitution
• Free MPs from party control over their debates,
  votes, and etc. (162).
• 1/5 of MPs can propose to have inconfidential
  debate against the Premier and
• 1/6 MPs can do against ministers (155).

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i. Strengthen the check-and-balance mechanisms

• Our new constitution
• prevent party merging in the parliament (104)

• Prevent the overwhelming majority government.

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i. Strengthen the check-and-balance mechanisms

• Activate the control power of judicial branch

• Our new constitution
• Have the supreme court in charged of cases
  against political posts (263), election frauds
  (139), and civil rights enforcement (212)
• Have the constitution court review the
  administrative law- making (184).

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i. Strengthen the check-and-balance mechanisms

• Strengthen independent institutions

• Independent institutions can propose budgets
  directly to the parliament (168), to free this
  institutions from fiscal burdens.

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ii. Enhance direct democracy

• Strengthen the media

• Our new constitution
• Not only address the principle of free media, no
  public censer allowed, and no state subsidies
  (45,46), but also
• Mandate that political posts are not allowed to
  own, directly or indirectly, the media agencies
  (48)

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ii. Enhance direct democracy

• Open political spaces for citizens

• Our new constitution
• 10,000 peoples can propose to initiate laws (163)
• 20,000 peoples can propose to recall and impeach
  political posts at all levels, including leaders
  of independent institutions (164)
• 50,000 peoples can propose for constitutional
  amendment.

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ii. Enhance direct democracy

• Open political spaces for citizens

• Our new constitution
• Referendums are required for state actions that
  have serious impacts on citizens way of life,
  including FTA engagement (165) and
  constitutional amendment (291)
• Establish the civic political development fund
  to provide resources in supporting the civic
  movement.

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ii. Enhance direct democracy

• Strengthen community and local self-government

• Our new constitution
• Streamlining intergovernmental relations, with
  respect to fiscal and functional devolution,
  personnel management, and others (281, 283, 288).
• Acknowledge community rights to protect their
  environment (67)

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iii. Reinforce enhance civil rights (26-62)

• Remove legal preconditions to automatically
  activate civil rights once the constitution is
  promulgated.
• Reinforce right to access to free primary
  education, basic health facilities, and the right
  of civil disobedience.

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iii. Reinforce enhance civil rights (26-62)

• The Human Right Commission can bring cases
  directly to the court (257).
• Enhance basic rights, such as
• the right of disadvantages (the elderly, the
  homeless poor, and the disabilities) to access to
  basic living facilities.
• The right of public employees to form labor
  unions.

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iv. Prevent political illusion and corruptions

• Strengthen fiscal democracy

• Our new constitution Mandate to have
• Tax reform to attain a fair-taxation principle.
• introduce the public finance administration act
  that founds the principle of fiscal democracy.

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iv. Prevent political illusions and corruptions

• Prevent conflict of interests in politics

• Our new constitution mandate that
• Political posts are not allowed to involve,
  directly or indirectly (via nominee agents),
  public concession and purchasing, or receive
  benefits from public organizations (265).

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iv. Prevent illusions and corruptions

• Activate political ethics

• Our new constitution
• Put political ethics in place, enforced by the
  Ombudsmen, the parliament, and citizen, through
  the impeachment process (280).

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The progress and next steps

• The drafted constitution passed the national
  referendum on August 19, 2007, with 58.18
  accepted.
• The general election is coming up in the next
  three months, December 2007.
• The new democratic government is expected to
  assume power in the next four-five months,
  January-February 2008.

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• Thats all, and thank you.
• More discussion is preferable in the
  question-answer session.