Somchai Preechasilpakul, law lecturer from Chiang Mai University, said at the seminar – “A lesson from Pridi and Puey to the Drafting of a Charter and Democracy” – that both figures had long championed fundamental democratic principles, including the promotion of rights and liberty as a social contract guaranteeing true democracy.

Though the country would have a constitution in place, in Pridi’s view, that would not mean that it had a true democracy as long as those principles were missing, said Somchai.

“We still much lack a so-called ‘constitutionalism’, including the principles of freedom and freedom of expression,” he said, citing the recent sweeping enforcement by the authorities of laws to suppress people’s expression.

Siripan Noksuan Sawasdee, from Chulalongkorn University, said Pridi had strictly adhered to the concept of “people first” as the core of democracy, and anything other than this was not democratic.

The present draft’s transitory period, she said, was deemed to be quite far away from Pridi’s definition of democracy, as it would instead promote “elitist democracy” via the newly proposed system of total selection of the Senate.

Prinya Tevanaruemitkul, a law lecturer at Thammasat University, said Pridi knew well the weakness of the Thai-style parliamentary system, and had tried to tie the House of Representatives up with the people by freeing MPs from political party membership.

However, the 1974 constitution did otherwise, becoming the turning point from Pridi’s idea in a move that has contributed to the present problem of political party domination over MPs, Prinya explained.

The current regime had been trying to tackle this issue, but the approach proposed apparently has resulted in further political complications with the newly proposed selected Senate having power to jointly choose a prime minister, the lecturer added.

“I’m worried,” said Prinya. “What we will see is a weak mixture of middle-sized political parties, apparently dominated by the largest so-called ‘senator’ party. The point is that the military [which would appoint the senators] would become a stakeholder in the new political landscape, and this would become an issue. To successfully bring back true democracy, we should not justify other regimes in any way.”