The bill draft was approved on Thursday by the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) and would be forwarded to the Cabinet for final consideration.

Once enacted, the law would set up the high-level committee on national strategy, which would then appoint strategy making committees to finish drafting the national strategy plan within 120 days, Wissanu said.

When finished, the strategy would be submitted to the PM-chaired committee for consideration. Afterwards, it would be forwarded to the Cabinet and the NLA, he said.

“The [PM-chaired] committee would also monitor the work for the next five years. National strategy is a big deal,” he said. “If violating or corrupting the said strategy, officials involved would risk [being looked at] by the National Anti-Corruption Commission or the Constitutional Court,

“They could even be jailed or stripped of their offices,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wissanu said that the national reform bill draft, also passed yesterday by the NLA, would set up 11 reform committees, each taking care of a specific aspects of reform. They would act in place of the National Reform Steering Assembly, who is due to be defunct once the reform bill is enacted.

The 11 committees, unlike that of the national strategy, would only be empowered to consider and propose reform issues to the Cabinet for consideration.

The reform would not be made into a solid plan but instead raised in points to make them flexible, he added.