Of all branches of administration, the judiciary seemed to have the most power, Pornson Liengboonlertchai, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s political science faculty, said at a public talk on the new constitution yesterday titled “Utopia is Doomed”.

He said that in the new charter draft, the Constitutional Court would be able to say whether there were circumstances that allowed a government to pass an emergency decree.

However, “such a decision should be made only by the executive branch because it rules the country. They should be able to judge under which situation an emergency decree should be adopted,” Pornson said. If the Constitutional Court had the final say, it would mean it had more power than the executive branch.

Under the draft, the Constitutional Court also had the authority to disqualify the elected administration, he said. And that went against the principles of constitutionality, because, theoretically, people could only be disqualified by those who elect or select them.

He said the Court would also have a problem of justifying its actions because it has no links to the people, despite having so much power. Among the issues was that the Court would be able to rule on matters previously covered by Article 7 – the power to have a final say on matters when no articles in the charter apply to a situation.

Pornson questioned whether judges could adequately give a verdict because the new qualifications for Constitutional Court judges were “rather weak” in his opinion.

Another speaker at the event, Siripan Noksuan Sawasdee, said that the new charter would weaken civil society, as well as the political institution.

With the newly proposed electoral system, Mixed Member Apportionment, no parties would ever gain a majority of seats in the parliament. This would give more bargaining power to medium-sized parties.

She said lists of candidates to be prime minister could be used to appoint a leader from parties that gain at least five per cent of the total number of MPs. But statistically, only three parties could gain such a number – Pheu Thai, the Democrats and Bhum Jai Thai.

So, when neither of the big parties gain a majority of MPs and cannot form a government on their own, power would lies in the hands of medium-sized parties, which could choose who they would join to form a government.

Small parties would be left out such machinations, Siripan said. They would find it hard to compete under such a system, which requires a party to field constituency candidates to gain seats, including the party-list ones.

The classification of senators into 29 groups was also problematic, Siripan said. She feared that they might not be inclusive or proportional.

Having 10 senators from each group to make up the 200-member house would not be fair. She questioned if the House should have more senators from the agricultural or labour sectors than civil servant or the military, because in reality the former outnumber the latter.

Yesterday’s session was hosted by Chulalongkorn’s Faculty of Political Science. The speakers were all lecturers there, including Supachai Yawabhrapas and Amorn Wanichwiwatanan, who are also members of the current Constitution Drafting Commission

More than 100 people attended. They occasionally rocked with laughter as the moderator, Pitch Pongsawat, sometimes cut in and eased the atmosphere by cracking a joke.

At the end of the session, the staff also conducted a little experiment by having participants raise a paper reading ‘yes’ or ‘no’, as if voting in a referendum to pass or reject the constitution draft. Most of the papers in the lecture hall said ‘no’.