Miffed at the help offered
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha may not like what is happening with the increasingly fraught political situation in the country. However, critics reckon he has what it takes to untangle the mess.
Political uneasiness had been brewing but it did not result in major complications until after the organic bill on political parties passed the National Legislative Assembly (NLA), according to political analysts.
It is one of four essential bills needed to organise a general election. The bill, according to critics, introduced new rules which heavily burden political parties.
The parties must, for example, review their memberships before they can proceed to hold a primary vote in which the members select potential MP candidates to represent the parties in the general election. The party executives will decide who will be fielded on the party’s ticket only from among those on the list proposed by the members.
However, the review, as well as the compulsory verification of membership, has been lambasted as being unfair to existing political parties which must perform the tedious task of authenticating their memberships, a process requiring confirmation from more than a dozen state agencies in charge of citizenship registration.
The Democrat Party cried foul over the review and verification issues, complaining that newly established parties do not have to go through the same process. All they need do is have members fill in the admission form and membership instantly becomes legitimate.
Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said the database review and verification procedures could be shortened with the aid of online technology to remove red tape.
The National Council for Peace and Order and the government, apparently paying heed to political parties’ fears of not being able to meet the review deadline, have stepped up to the plate. Gen Prayut exercised Section 44 to issue an order amending the organic law on political parties to allow more time for the parties to complete their membership checks.
Members of parties are required to produce letters to confirm their membership and pay party fees within 30 days of April 1 or lose their status. Existing parties will not be able to begin their member registration process until April 1, while new parties can start on March 1.
Mr Abhisit said the Section 44 order has generated an unnecessary burden for parties while failing to comply with the constitution which stipulates that power under Section 44 must be exercised for the sake of reforms, promoting unity and maintaining security. Applying the order to rectify a law aimed at easing a legal technicality is not one of the criteria.
Also, the order was issued to amend the organic law with no feedback or opinions sought from the parties concerned, Mr Abhisit said.
Gen Prayut, according to the critics, needs only to lift the ban on political activities, enforced since the coup in May 2014, which would help speed up the review and verification processes. Parties would be able to resume meetings and expedite key steps to move the membership checks along quickly
The critics observed the NLA had also shown itself to be “overly sympathetic” to political parties after the majority of lawmakers scrutinising the organic law on the election of MPs were reportedly looking to rewrite it to make it possible to extend the deadline for holding an election from November to February next year.
The lawmakers were convinced political parties were pressed for time to review their memberships and sponsor the primary vote, which, according to electoral experts, promises to be a seriously complicated and drawn-out affair.
Some NLA members thought they were doing the political parties a favour by proposing to put off the deadline. However, many parties insisted the “empathy” was misplaced and totally uncalled for.
Politicians said they were never consulted by the NLA about whether or not they could manage the membership review and the primary vote by the deadline. Some admitted they were taken by surprise that the NLA, some of whose members do not exactly admire politicians, was suddenly inclined to be accommodating to political parties.