GENERAL PRAYUT Chan-o-cha has the power to dissolve Parliament if parliamentarians fail to select a new prime minister after the next general election, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said yesterday.

As head of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), PM Prayut still retains his wide-ranging powers under Article 44 of the post-coup interim charter until the next Cabinet is formed, he explained.

The deputy premier dismissed concerns that the process to select a new prime minister could drag on for months if elected MPs and selected senators could not agree on the next government head.

“I can assure you that there will be no deadlock. The existing power can be exercised to solve such a problem,” he stressed.

Wissanu added, however, that Parliament’s dissolution would be a last resort to be adopted only after both the House of Representatives and the Senate had spent too much time trying to choose a new PM.

He said it would be best if parliamentarians could reach an agreement quickly in selecting a new government head.

However, if the selection process dragged on for five or six months, the public should accept there was a problem and acknowledge the need for dissolution by Prayut, he added.

“They [parliamentarians] have to choose the new PM as soon as possible. It is best to achieve that in the first round,” Wissanu said.

The Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that senators are eligible to seek a waiver of PM candidate lists submitted by political parties.

There has been concern that the Senate could be a pawn in deterring a successful PM selection and prolong the tenure of the current coup-installed government.

Independent political academic Trakoon Meechai said he viewed Wissanu’s suggestion of a possible Parliament dissolution as a warning for political blocs to reach an agreement as soon as possible on the next prime minister.

“The government may want to tell political parties that they need to settle things down when the time comes. Otherwise their political roles will be stripped as Parliament is dissolved,” Trakoon said.

But he believes such a scenario is unlikely, arguing the parties would rather negotiate on the sidelines and try to reach an agreement instead letting their “investments to go down the drain”.

He expects more compromise between the military and the political blocs. Large parties may gain the majority of MP seats but they could not function smoothly without the support of junta-appointed senators.

Ramkhamhaeng University former rector Sukhum Nualsakul said a special high-level meeting as stipulated in Article 5 of a new constitution could come in handy to solve a deadlock.

“But it should be remembered that Article 44 will still remain in place,” Sukhum said. “This government has so many choices,” he added.

Meanwhile, questions have also arisen over whether the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the amendment of the draft charter was irrelevant with regard to the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC).

Constitutional Court judge Charan Phakdhithanakul yesterday said the judgement was within the remit given by the interim charter of 2014, which said the court should oversee whether the amendment was in line with the August referendum result.

The ruling, he said, was not a response to the CDC’s request, but to the interim constitution.

The first recommendation given to the CDC involved adjusting the wording to allow the Senate to have a role in choosing a prime minister during the first five years after the next Parliament took office.

Charan said that such wording matched the referendum’s extra question, which also gave a timeframe of five years.

The second point that the court ruled should be amended was that the Senate should be eligible to sign with MPs a request for a waiver of the premier-candidate lists.

The judge explained that the court had decided that if the Senate was to vote in the final stage to allow the waiver, then the two parliamentary chambers should decide together from the beginning.

However, only MPs could propose the PM candidates, Charan stressed.

The judge also rejected the notion that the move paved the way for an outsider prime minister.

The Constitutional Court ruled that the Senate should be included in the vote to exempt the candidate lists in order to facilitate a smoother process, he explained.

Chief constitution writer Meechai Ruchupan yesterday said he did not think the court’s ruling had gone beyond the CDC’s request, and that it was appropriate and in line with the interim charter.

The CDC will start amending the charter next week following the recommendations, he added.