The CDC’s arguments would result in the setting up of a joint law review committee to look into the points, like the steps taken for the Election Commission draft bill.

The political party draft bill was passed by the NLA, and the CDC – as the body proposing the bill – had 10 days to see whether it had any more arguments following the NLA’s endorsement.

Udom said the CDC had decided to proceed with the legal review because it would like to ensure that an election, as addressed in the bill, is held with transparency.

The most problematic point is the proposed primary voting system, previously amended by the NLA’s law vetting committee after the NLA’s first reading.

It requires political parties’ branches or representatives to hold a primary election to allow party members to vote to choose MP candidates first, before submitting the list to party executives to pick.

Conventionally, party executives reserve the right to pick MP candidates.

Udom said the CDC had no problem with the system in principle but it wanted to ensure that the system would be complete before being implemented.

The CDC was wary of the primary voting system running into a problem when dealing with petitions against the voting results as the endorsed bill does not clearly address how to proceed with this, especially if done by ordinary citizens.

In addition, the primary voting system may affect a timeframe given for MP candidates to run in an election, in case it is held again following irregularities emerging after a poll result announcement.

Most importantly, the new charter stipulates that political parties have the right to field MP candidates, and this would result in further legal interpretation, whether the system runs against the constitutional spirit, Udom said.

Udom said he believed that the committee would not vote against the CDC’s proposals, like with the EC bill which it had just voted to not further amend.

This was because the CDC had come up with the rationale and recommendations to help improve the NLA-endorsed bill that should be worth looking into together at the committee’s meeting, he said.