A JOINT committee of private entities working with the government has decided to hire a foreign legal expert to help in the government’s ongoing law reform, Suvit Maesincee, secretary to the supreme committee on reform, reconciliation, and national strategy said yesterday.

Scott Jacobs, president of Jacobs, Cordova & Associates, who worked for the South Korean government as its legal adviser and helped reform several laws in the country, has been hired, Suvit said.

The government expected the company to take three to six months to complete the job, Suvit added.

Law reform is part of the government’s critical reform effort and it is being addressed along with other critical sectors in the new charter.

Suvit said the reform preparation committee decided yesterday that the supreme body would still be in place although new mechanisms for reform plans and the national strategy would be set up following the new law promulgation. This was to help steer critical reform work, including law reform, he said.

Progress in law reform would be subject to the supreme body’s consideration around the end of this month when it convenes, he said.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who chaired the reform preparation committee yesterday, raised the importance of law reform and the need to improve existing laws in the country to keep up with changes.

Buntoon Srethasirote, chair of the sub-panel working on structural reform, said the panel has addressed several laws that need to be reformed so that the country’s fundamentals could be improved.

At least eight fundamental challenges and 20 reform agendas have been underlined by the panel. The laws that need reformed include those for community forest management, land bank, national park management, community based justice, environmental impact asessment/environmental health impact assessment reforms, and others.

Suvit said that along with law reform, bureaucratic reform is also essential.

The reform preparation committee has addressed seven bureaucratic reform agendas. They include the reform of concerned laws, bureaucratic criteria for assessment, bureaucratic personnel reform, bureaucratic efficiency, state budget and procurement, digital-based bureaucracy, and public service facilitation by the state.

Scott Jacobs, president of Jacobs, Cordova & Associates, who worked for the South Korean government as its legal adviser and helped it reform several laws in the country, has been hired, Suvit said.

The government expected the company to take three to six months to complete the job, Suvit added.

Law reform is part of the government’s critical reform effort and it is being addressed along with other critical sectors in the new charter.

Suvit said the reform preparation committee decided today that the supreme body would still be in place although new mechanisms for reform plans and the national strategy would be set up following the new law promulgation. This was to help steer critical reform work, including law reform, he said.

Prorgress in law reform would be subject to the supreme body’s consideration around the end of this month when it convenes, he said.

Regardless, What said he would not run for the position again.

What, a former judge, said on Wednesday that the current NHRC could not come back after a reset. This was because, under the new Constitution, the commission was recognised as an independent organisation whose commissioners could only serve on such a body once in a lifetime.

The new organic bill governing the NHRC stipulates that the current commissioners should leave office after the law comes into effect.

However, some legislators have argued that the commissioners could run again for their positions because the agency is not an independent organisation according to the charter of 2007 that gave birth to the agency.

What insisted that the 2007 charter stipulated that NHRC members could only serve once.

“The fact about the NHRC members not being able to run again is stated in the charter. It is not feasible to write in the organic law that we can,” What said.

The NHRC chairman said that any news to the contrary was merely a different interpretation of the law, perhaps designed to play down strong opposition to the resetting.

The government-initiated reconciliation committee will hold public hearings on the “agreement of truth” next week as parts of its effort to forge understanding on the issue.

Committee spokesperson Maj-General Kongcheep Tantrawanich said om Wednesday that the committee would introduce the draft at hearings in local areas of Bangkok, Nakhon Ratchasima, Phitsanulok and Nakhon Si Thammarat between July 17 and 20.

Conducted by a committee led by Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwan, the draft is meant to create a non-legally-binding commitment among political fractures that they will join hands in line with 20-year national strategy and the 2017 charter.

Many academics, civil society members and political figures joined in the drafting process by providing opinions to the committee. The exception was the whistle-blower group, People’s Democratic Reform Foundation, which declined to join.

The committee had also relied on previous academic reports and research on reconciliation building, Kongcheep said.