Free vote for PM

Editorial: Senate should get free hand if called upon to help select PM.

As the country re-emerges on the path to democracy, with voters crowding into polling stations yesterday for their first chance in five years to help shape at the ballot box how their country is run, Thais will hope that the trust they place in the new system is honoured by the politicians they have elected to implement it.

Over the coming weeks, all the elected 500 MPs will be busy with coalition wheeling and dealing prior to joining a vote in parliament to choose a prime minister. But the Upper House, for the first time, will also play a key role in deciding who will become the country’s next premier, thanks to the lengthy and confusing “extra question” put forward for approval along with the 2017 military-sponsored constitution during the 2016 referendum.

Unlike the previous 2006 coup charter, which provided for half the Senate seats to be elected, the current one provides for a fully appointed Senate for the first five years after the election, all of whom will be directly or indirectly appointed by junta leader and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

Given that the senators will owe their jobs to the regime, not the electorate, many speculate Gen Prayut, who is the prime ministerial candidate of the Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP), will be their likely choice as prime minister.

The senators must be no less keen to show that they have minds of their own and can vote independently of those who appointed them, just as Gen Prayut assures us they will.

Parties will be keen to ensure they form a coalition likely to command majority support. However, many parties will feel the odds are stacked against them if a minority coalition backed by the regime, for example, is able to undercut their efforts by appealing to the Senate where it has overwhelming support to back their candidate for prime minister.

The PPRP will likely try to persuade its coalition members to put Gen Prayut up as prime minister.

Some parties in the pro-democracy camp have already declared they will not work with Gen Prayut, as he hails from a coup.

However, if Pheu Thai and the Democrats end up with a larger number of MPs and share of the party vote than PPRP can muster, Thais could end up with a minority government they do not want, and a leader, in Gen Prayut, whom the parties they backed have declared is persona non grata.

It is little wonder that, in the run-up to the poll, leaders of the main parties urged the next Senate to let them have first crack at forming a government based on majority support in the House.

Given the bias in the system in favour of the status quo, it will be important for the chairmen of the House and Senate to ensure that any joint vote for prime minister is open and transparent.

Under the 2017 constitution, MPs are allowed to vote independently in the House regardless of their parties’ resolution. Such practice should apply to the Senate for the vote to select a premier as well.

Despite calls for open selections, the senators have been chosen in secrecy by a panel headed by Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon.

A Nida poll last October found a majority lack confidence the senators will act impartially, as they will have been appointed without public input.

When the appointed senators’ names are finally put forward in May, voters will be keen to see the Senate help to deliver the outcomes they supported in yesterday’s hard-won poll.