THE NEW bill on reconciliation and the delivery of justice that is being drafted by the political committee of the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) is now part of the government’s urgent agenda, NLA vice president Peerasak Porchit said yesterday.

Peerasak attended the first meeting of the government-initiated reform preparation committee, which comes under the super-committee overseeing reform, reconciliation and national strategy, referred to in Thai as Por Yor Por. The meeting was held at Government House yesterday.

The bill focuses on providing justice and rehabilitation for politically motivated offenders and victims of the political turmoil between 2005 and 2014, Peerasak said.

He added that the whips of the NLA, the government and the National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) would be dissolved and the three parties would be working together to push reform agendas through the Por Yor Por committee and its subcommittees.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who chaired the meeting, said concerned parties were called in to expand understanding of the government’s directions on work concerning reform, reconciliation, national strategy and administration.

In addition, there will be legal work that needs to be put in place for facilitation and delivery, he said, without elaborating to what he was referring.

The new administrative committee, which the prime minister chairs, will help to expedite the work, while integrating it with the joint acknowledgement of the concerned parties, he said.

The goal is to make the last year of work more tangible so the government could hand it over to its successor, he added.

“It’s a fact that the work of the committee’s sub-panels will be contradictory, which is why we need a jointly acknowledged work style under the committee,” Prayut said.

More joint meetings such as the one held yesterday were expected, while the committee’s secretary, PM’s Office Minister Suvit Maesincee, said new meetings would be related to panels focusing on national strategy and reconciliation preparation.

Suvit said yesterday’s meeting saw concerned parties review previous reform work and prioritise the NRSA’s 134 reform proposals by choosing the 27 most urgent ones in line with the government’s 10 agendas.

These agendas will include reform on administration, human development, infrastructure development as well as reforms of the fundamentals of the economy, which includes reform in the management of natural resources.

The meeting also agreed to reduce bureaucratic procedures by advancing the agenda via the Por Yor Por committees and the reform committee. It would also set up four sub-panels to help reform work, Suvit said.

Meanwhile, NLA president Pornpetch Wichitcholchai said the agency was ready to advance necessary legal work to support the tasks at hand, adding that it was ready to expedite deliberation on 41 laws required to move the country forward.

That work would be added to the Constitution Drafting Commission’s 10 organic laws, although the NLA has already set up a panel to look into draft laws in advance to save time, Pornpetch said.