CDC chairman Meechai Ruchupan explained this matter in detail last Friday, saying people’s rights and freedoms would be ensured with a universal principle that they would be enjoyed provided no law limited that.

He also said that from now on several fundamental rights and freedoms would principally come under the state’s unprecedented commitments and duties.

At a press briefing, he said: “We have secured people’s rights and freedom and lifted them up a significant degree. This has been done by shifting the way we define people’s rights and freedoms by transferring them to the state’s duties, meaning that from now on the state has the duty, as defined, to ensure people’s rights and freedoms are ensured.”

But critics have voiced concern over how people’s rights and freedoms have been defined in the charter.

Pairote Polpetch, a noted civil lawyer at the state-appointed Law Reform Commission, said the charter would give more power to the state while reducing people’s rights and freedoms, thus creating an imbalance of power and undermining people’s efforts in the past to increase their political participation.

He told a forum at the People’s Council for Reform – a civil organisation network campaigning for major civil-based reform – that this new approach meant that people’s rights and freedoms would become real only when the state took action.

He viewed that as a further weakening of people’s power and their participation in politics.

A clear case in point and the most notable example of this is the absence of community rights for the joint management of the state’s environment, which was firmly addressed in the 1997 and 2007 charters. Community rights in previous charters were the result of a long fight to empower the public to have a greater say in the state’s development. It was always viewed as one of the most significant bargaining power guarantees when dealing with the state so people could determine their own fates.

So, it’s no wonder advocates concerned with rights protection and political participation have cried foul over such a shift. This is not to mention that several more similar rights and freedoms are either absent or toned down in this new draft.

It’s not such a bad idea to explore the idea of trying to give people a guarantee that their rights and freedoms would be secured via the state’s new commitment to doing so, considering the fact that we have long experienced the state’s painful ignorance of people’s rights and power.

But to remove something that is fundamental to people power is much too risky for the overall strength of all of us.

The CDC needs to demonstrate that it is not intent on reducing people power as speculated, by reconsidering this matter so that the necessary rights and freedoms are in the new charter draft.

Because only when these rights and freedoms are secured in a more comprehensive manner will the road leading to a strong democracy be walked along.