THE CHIEF constitution writer yesterday said Prime Minister and junta head General Prayut Chan-o-cha had “okayed” the drafters’ revisions to their original draft of the charter, although some of them were not in line with suggestions from the powers-that-be.

Meechai Ruchupan, chairman of the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC), said he had talked with Prayut about the charter’s transitory clauses involving the Senate.

“I talked to the prime minister and he is okay [with the revisions made],” he told reporters.

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam yesterday said the prime minister had found the CDC’s revisions to the original draft to be acceptable, although not all of the Cabinet’s suggestions had been incorporated.

The PM will not make any further suggestions involving the constitution and will just wait to see the final draft, due to be unveiled by the CDC next Tuesday, according to Wissanu.

The deputy PM, who is in charge of the government’s legal affairs, said Prayut, who also heads the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), had made the remarks during his meeting with other Cabinet members at Government House in the morning.

“Judging from the general picture I get, [the revised draft] is acceptable so there is no need to make any further suggestions,” Wissanu said.

The prime minister told his Cabinet members that when the final version was available, he would inform the Election Commission so that they could prepare to hold a national referendum on the draft constitution, Wissanu added.

The CDC is scheduled to meet with the National Legislative Assembly and the National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) next Wednesday to explain the final draft of the constitution that will be subject to the referendum, Alongkorn Ponlaboot, vice president of the NRSA, said yesterday.

He said members of his assembly would discuss next Friday its additional question that would be put to voters in the referendum.

Senators to be handpicked

The CDC has resolved to allow 244 senators to be handpicked by the NCPO and six others to be the senior-most security officials, while – under the draft – the Upper House has no authority to table a motion of no confidence against the government as requested by the so-called four rivers of power.

Members of the CDC took part in the third day of their retreat in Prachuap Khiri Khan’s Hua Hin district yesterday.

Meechai said before the meeting that it had been the intention of the drafters from the outset that the nine-member selection committee for senators would only serve to screen the candidates, who would ultimately be handpicked and appointed by the ruling NCPO. “This way, there is room for checks and balances. We [constitution writers] figure that if we let the selection committee both recruit candidates and appoint them to be senators, they will have absolute power without any checks,” he explained.

“However, in the final step that the NCPO gets to choose who would be senators, the charter draft does not stipulate clearly who would do that job. We leave it for the NCPO to decide,” he added. The CDC chairman said he did not see such a practice as a means for the junta to retain power, because the Senate would not have the authority to choose the future premier.

Under the draft, the senators – besides the six security top-brass members – would originate from two different sources.

Before being chosen by the junta, 194 of them would be recruited by the selection committee – appointed by the NCPO – and the other 50 would be elected among the 20 social and professional groups via the cross-election method created by the CDC.

The CDC explained that this would prevent possible discrimination, as they all would equally be handpicked by the NCPO while still allowing the CDC to test out whether cross-election worked in practice.

As a member of the NCPO, Meechai said he would not take part in the Senate selection process as it would only make things harder for him.

However, this did not mean he was “resigning from the board,” he stressed.

Wrong ratio put out

Meanwhile, Meechai also said yesterday that the parliamentary vote required to waive a premier candidate list remained two-thirds, not three-fifths as mistakenly announced by the CDC on Thursday.

He admitted he had wrongly recorded the panel’s resolution on the proportion of votes required to waive a PM candidate list, as he was dazed after discussing the two numerical options for so long, resulting in him typing the wrong number into the document.

In a separate interview, CDC spokesman Udom Rathamarit, who was in charge when the wrong figure was put out on Thursday, confirmed Meechai’s account.

He explained that he had been able to provide the rationale behind the three-fifths figure because he used the arguments presented in the discussion, stressing that it should have really been two-thirds but he had thought otherwise because he saw his chief type in the other figure.

The three-fifths ratio, if used, would make waiving the premier candidate list easier as it would only require 450 of the 750 parliamentarians to win the vote, while two-thirds would require 500 votes.

In a related development, Chartchai na Chiangmai, another CDC spokesman, said that the commission was working on the final touches to the draft, and was deliberating on the matter of independent organisations. So far, there had not been any significant changes to the draft charter, with only minor wording having been adjusted and a few clauses added, he said.

Changes include the disqualification of those found guilty of amending a budgetary motion in their favour, and the inclusion of the opposition leader in the crisis-managing ad hoc panel that would be called to meet by the Constitutional Court under Article 7 of the draft, he added.

The final draft will be available on Tuesday, with a national referendum to be held in early August.