By Thai Newsroom Reporters
A PUBLIC REFERENDUM, largely anticipated to be held nationwide early next year, may simultaneously involve a couple of significant issues on which the people will decide whether and how a future government may work at the same time when they will pick their representatives in a general election, Deputy Prime Minister Borwornsak Uwanno confirmed today (Sep.29).
During a formal policy statement addressed at parliament, the deputy prime minister in charge of legal affairs of the current Bhumjaithai-led government confirmed that the couple of matters of public and national interests awaiting the people’s decisions via the nationwide, public referendum will refer to the making of a new constitution in place of the current charter of 2017 and the contentious Thai-Cambodian MoUs.
The public referendum on those key issues may be practically conducted on the same day alongside the nationwide election for MPs to save the Election Commission’s funding from the taxpayer’s money calculated to cost as much as six billion baht at a time, according to the deputy prime minister.
The date for the next race to parliament is largely expected as soon as some time in the upcoming March since Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has openly pledged to dissolve the House of Representatives to call a general election in a four-month time after his government has formally delivered their policy statement today and prepared groundwork for the making of a new constitution in lieu of the coup junta-designed charter.
Nevertheless, Borwornsak contended that the current constitution can merely be amended in part and not in whole for fear of the possibility that Section 1 and Section 2 of the charter pertaining to the monarchy might otherwise be altered in any directions other than already established.
The deputy prime minister said four separate ballots will be handed out on the polling date including one for the election of a constituency-based MP, one for the election of party-listed MPs, one for the voter to decide whether a new constitution should be made as well as whether the so-called Constitution Amendment Committee should be set up for such a chore and the other for them to decide whether the questionable Thai-Cambodian MoUs of 2000 and 2001 signed in the times of former prime ministers Chuan Leekpai and Thaksin Shinawatra respectively should be unilaterally, entirely terminated by Thailand.
The bilateral agreements have been invariably viewed by academics and critics as unjust and unfeasible to Thailand since they may have been primarily designed to serve the interests of the Cambodians rather than the Thais pertaining to a joint undersea, natural resources development scheme and maritime border demarcation lines around Kood island off Trat province, among other unsettled discrepancies.
The de facto Pheu Thai boss-turned-inmate Thaksin had allegedly, surreptitiously collaborated with senior Cambodian leader Hun Sen over the mega-billion-baht joint venture project in the upper stretch of the Gulf of Thailand for which the coup-deposed, former Thai prime minister had eagerly pushed after he had returned from self-exile abroad since the last couple of years.
CAPTIONS:
Top and Front Page: A graphic image on a new constitution. Credit – Thai Rath
Insert: Deputy Prime Minister Borwornsak Uwanno addressing the Parliament today. Photo – MNG Online
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