Worawit Sukboon, secretary-general of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, announced at a press conference on Wednesday morning that Watcharapol had stated his intention at an NACC meeting the day before.

Watcharapol has been closely connected to General Prawit since 2014, when he served as deputy secretary-general of the Office of the Prime Minister.

After it became widely known that Prawit had in his possession up to 25 watches whose value far exceeded his earnings, citizens made it clear they didn’t trust Watcharapol to oversee an NACC investigation into the matter.

Prawit also failed to declare the watches to the NACC as valuable assets when he joined the Cabinet, as is required by law.

Worawit said the NACC had asked Prawit for a third time to provide further information about how he came to possess so many luxury watches.

General Prawit has said he merely borrowed the watches from wealthy friends. Now, Worawit said, the agency had arranged to interview several individuals Prawit named in connection with the matter.

He said the investigation should be completed by the end of February. If the watches do indeed turn out to belong to Prawit’s friends, he could not be judged guilty of concealing assets, Worawit said, but the NACC would consider other legal aspects of the case.

This followed the listing of arrest warrants against eight prominent members of the demonstration movement on allegations of gathering more than five persons for staging a political protest, which is banned by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).

A total of 144 organisations issued the statement on Tuesday denouncing the oppression of the campaigners of the long march for protecting citizens’ rights and demanding that the authorities respect freedom of expression.

The umbrella non-governmental organisations People GO Network started their long march from Thammasart University in Pathumthani to Khon Kaen last Saturday to campaign for the protection of universal health coverage, food security, community rights, and political rights. However, from the very first hours of their march, the activists faced strong interference from the police and military officers.

The NCPO saw their activity as a political protest and hence a violation of NCPO order 3/2558, so its representative filed a complaint with Klong Luang Police in Pathum Thani on Sunday against eight prominent members of the march. This is despite the fact that the marchers have tried to avoid violating this order by dividing into separate groups of four persons.

“The organisations listed below commonly view that this march is the rightful exercising of freedom of expression, which is protected by the current Constitution and does not affect national stability, but it will disturb legislation and policy planning of NCPO to benefit some capitalists, so we support this campaign, as it alerts the public to this problem,” the statement reads.

It was also claimed in the statement that oppression of the activists in this campaign was a vivid example of the unjust use of power by the NCPO against the people. It urged the NCPO to protect the people’s rights, accept the campaigners’ demands, and return full democracy to Thai society.

Meanwhile, the People GO Network has asked for donations of equipment for their communication team to broadcast via Facebook Live, as they have had difficulties in properly broadcasting the whole march during the first days of their campaign.

Their list of needed equipment was: five mobile phones, two external batteries, two tripods for mobile phone, and two selfie sticks.

The group stated on their Facebook page that they did not want money donation and did not need expensive equipment, as they just required usable communication tools for broadcasting live throughout the march.

It was reasoned that they have to broadcast all their journey live to let people easily watch their campaign and prevent any unexpected operations against the protesters.

The planned election date in November – as promised by Prayut during his visit to Washington last year – is appearing less likely as the bill vetting committee under the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) is set to amend the MPs election bill, putting off its enforcement for 90 days.

The NLA will deliberate the MPs election bill tomorrow and some members have suggested the delay should be 120 days.

Prayut yesterday did not mention his previous promise that he would announce the election date midyear and the poll could be expected by November.

Prior to the US visit, Prayut had made several other promises on the end of the so-called “road map” and the election, but he has not succeeded in fulfilling them.

Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said he hoped the international community would understand that the possible delay was in the hands of the NLA.

“We have to make it clear that lawmaking is under the legislative body and the prime minister is not a member of that body. He is the chief of the executive branch,” Don told reporters yesterday.

Don added that he would explain the process to the international community but could not guarantee that they would understand.

While the NLA is the rubber stamp of the military junta, Prayut said yesterday he would not overrule the authority of legislature.

“I have to be the example, showing that we have to have faith in the Parliament,” he said. “I am confident in the NLA and the Constitution Drafting Commission [CDC]. I’ll never transgress in their work.

“Transgression into the system is not good at all. It would make it impossible for people to work,” he said. He also advised people to listen to different opinions and not rely on only a single source.

“There are not many groups of people that keep talking about this issue [the election delay],” he said.

The election would take place eventually, but when and how would depend on decisions by involved agencies, he said.

“Everything follows the Constitution and the road map,” Prayut said. “We all want the country to be peaceful and move forward smoothly. The delay in the enforcement of the MPs election bill will also follow the Constitution.”

Influence denied

Critics question whether the bill vetting committee has been influenced by the junta in their move to delay the poll.

Meanwhile, NLA whip spokesman Jate Siratharanon said yesterday the government had not sent any signals to the legislature regarding the controversial amendment.

While debate still persists within the vetting committee, he said he would argue that the 90-day delay was necessary.

Considering the ongoing ban on political activities, political parties remain frozen. They could not hold meetings or carry out primary votes to determine election candidates, Jate said. Postponing the enforcement for another 90 days would give political parties time to prepare before the election period, he said.

Chief charter writer Meechai Ruchupan yesterday said the delay did not necessarily mean the election would be delayed, but if it was, it should not be longer than two to three months.

“The calculation is usually based on the assumption that we use up the maximum time. But if the process can go quicker, then the election can take place sooner,” Meechai said.

In a related development, political critics and the Election Commission (EC) have suggested it would be easier if the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) lifted the ban and allowed political activities.

Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan, a NCPO key member, yesterday said the government might have a different view on the matter and questioned whether the EC had the power to tell the government what to do. The organic bills had not been passed yet “so everyone should calm down. We will surely lift the ban,” Prawit said.

Asked whether the government would discuss the issue with the NLA as its image was at stake, Prawit said: “The government has not made any change to the road map. We have not done anything. It’s all [in the hands of] the NLA and the CDC. There are more than 200 legislators, we cannot possibly talk to all of them.”

Once endorsed, all the reform plans will be implemented without needing to be passed by the National Legislative Assembly or receive royal endorsement, he said.

Five-page summaries of each plan will be produced and the National Council for Peace and Order will work alongside the reform committees as well as the state media in promoting the work to the public, Sansern explained.

Reform plans are required under the national reform law.

Thirteen reform committees have been appointed to develop the plans and they will help in supervising their implementation by concerned agencies.

The order, which extends the periods for their administrative work ahead of the next general election, was later deemed to have included new conditions that political parties said violated their rights.

Abhisit said Order Number 53/2560 had violated Articles 26 and 27 of the Constitution.

Article 26 addresses legal enactments, which it states should not violate the rights and freedom of the people, while Article 27 states that the rights and freedom of the people should be protected.

The junta chief’s order is also deemed to violate Article 45 of the charter, which concerns the rights of the people to set up political parties, Abhisit said.

Besides, the order may have violated the Constitution in terms of it being a legal enactment that should first pass public hearings in accordance with Article 77.

“I don’t mean to create a problem for the order issuer [National Council for Peace and Order chief and Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha], but the order is an issue in regard to violations of people’s rights and freedom, which contradicts the political reform effort. Its process is also not legitimate and is contradictory to what is addressed in the charter,” the former PM said.

The order, Abhisit said, caused trouble to the people and put more burdens on them, which contradicted the Constitution.

For instance, they are asked to verify their membership, which entails a great deal of paperwork, while political party leaders have to endorse them all, increasing the burden on them as well, he added.

The order has also created unfair treatment between old and new parties, he said.

Ombudsman secretary-general Rakkecha Saechai said the Ombudsman would take the matter into consideration, along with a similar petition from the Pheu Thai Party.

Prayut said people should not mix up Prawit’s private matters and his work. Prawit’s personal belongings had nothing to do with the national budget, the premier emphasised.

The issue should be left for the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate, he added.

Prayut also said he could not exercise his absolute power under Article 44 to deal with the scandal. When he had done so in the past to punish officials involved in wrongdoings, the relevant agencies had to make a proper proposal to his office first, he said.

“It’s not that we can rely on the Article 44 all the time. I have to be careful using it,” Prayut said.

Prawit, meanwhile, said he was worried about nothing, even though some international media outlets had reported on the issue.

Before leaving Government House in his van, Prawit, who was apparently in a bad mood, simply said he would not allow reporters to ask him questions about the watches.

Pressure is building on Prawit despite a former military officer’s revelation confirming the deputy prime minister’s account of the origins of the watches: that they belonged to a friend from secondary school who had subsequently died.

However, former deputy prime minister, MR Pridiyathorn Devakula, another friend of Prawit’s from the same secondary school, said early this week that if he faced similar circumstances, he would have already resigned. He also said that he believed Prawit would resign soon because of the mounting pressure.

Prawit is facing fierce criticism after being photographed wearing many different high-end timepieces. Members of the public are continuing to ask how a military officer making less than Bt1 million a year could possibly have afforded the luxury items.

The government’s inaction and Prawit’s account that the watches had been lent to him by a late friend continue to draw questions and scepticism, including from the international media.

Wissanu said he believed that the delay would not be as long as some people feared. As such, the election could still be held to schedule.

But if the election is to be delayed, the government should come up with an explanation that people can accept, he said.

The Deputy PM, who is also the government’s key legal expert, said the amendment bill still has a long way to go. It has to pass deliberation in the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) before proceeding to law reviews and other processes. This would take about one more month after the NLA’s endorsement of the bill.

THE COMMITTEE vetting the MPs election bill doubled down yesterday on its controversial decision to delay enforcing the law for an additional three months after it is promulgated.

In affirming the decision, the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) committee said the junta order freezing political parties, which is still in force, could leave politicians too little time to prepare for the next election.

Commentators have predicted that the postponement will result in delaying the next election until February 2019, rather than it being held in November this year as was repeatedly promised by Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha.

Committee spokesman Taweesak Suthakawatin said at a press conference yesterday that last month’s order by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) dictating that existing political parties must wait until April before updating their membership registration records had made the amendment to the MPs election bill necessary.

Political parties would not be able to make pre-election arrangements under the law in time, he said.

The committee decided it therefore needed to delay the deadline for 90 additional days, Taweesak said.

The Constitution stipulates that the election should be held within 150 days after all four organic laws related to various aspects of the election are passed.

The four laws are considered essential for the election and the MPs law is the last of the four.

NLA members were reportedly concerned that if the MPs election law is enforced immediately, the clock on the 150-day deadline would start ticking and there would not be sufficient time for political parties to work on the changes required by the new laws, Taweesak said.

The complication is largely because the NCPO has refused to lift the ban on political activities, despite the political parties law promulgation in early October. Instead, the NCPO set a new timetable starting in March and April when the end of the so-called “road map” to the election will be fast approaching.

The same order also said the NCPO should consider lifting the ban and work with political parties and groups in the run-up to the election after all four laws are promulgated.

This led to uncertainty over when exactly political parties could legally hold meetings, Taweesak said.

Some legislators had even proposed a 120-day delay, as they worried 90 days would be insufficient, he said. They did not want any more amendments after the law is already in effect, he added.

However, some legislators disagreed with the proposed extension. They said the law should become effective on the day after it is promulgated in the Royal Gazette, as written in the original draft.

The final decision would only come when the bill was deliberated in the NLA on Thursday, Taweesak said.

NLA members also did not want the complication to lead to the use of Prayut’s absolute powers under Article 44 in his capacity as NCPO chief, he said, which would draw more criticism.

’There’s no order’

Asked why the NLA members did not advise the NCPO to lift its ban on political activities, Taweesak said it was beyond their authority.

A total of 10 organic bills have been written and passed by the Constitution Drafting Commission and the NLA.

The MPs election bill is the only bill regarding which the vetting committee had to hold a press conference to explain to the public the stipulation to postpone the enforcement.

Despite such a controversial amendment, Taweesak said the work of the vetting committee had been straightforward.

Meanwhile, Prayut yesterday dismissed the perception that the ruling junta had been behind the expected NLA delay.

When asked to comment on the matter, Prayut said briefly: “There’s no order.”

He appeared to have been saying that there had not been interference by his government or the NCPO.

The prime minister then walked away, avoiding more questions from reporters.

At the time, he was presiding over a seminar for senior executives titled “One Country, One Team” at the Impact Muang Thong Thani conference centre in Nonthaburi.

In a related development, anti-corruption activist Srisuwan Janya yesterday filed a petition with Prayut, asking him to exercise his powers to suspend the NLA’s authority regarding the controversial MPs bill.

Srisuwan said Prayut must send a signal to the NLA to stop proceeding with the amendment, because it directly affected his credibility.

Meanwhile, Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday called on the ruling junta and NLA to clearly explain how the public would benefit from a delay in the next election.

He said there should be a sufficiently clear reason for the general election to be further delayed, not just the preference of the NCPO and NLA.

“If the election delay is done with personal or political benefits in mind, that’s very dangerous,” he said.

“Without a clear reason how the election delay will benefit the public, there will be a hundred more questions from the public,” Abhisit said.

When asked who would benefit from the proposed 90-day stay of the enforcement of the MP election law, Abhisit said calls for a delay had come from people planning to set up new political parties.

“The NCPO and the NLA also can stay longer as a result,” he added.

The Democrat leader, who is a former prime minister, said he had learned about the 90-day postponement two weeks ago. He said that he had been tipped off by someone with knowledge about the matter.

“People who want the election to be delayed certainly wanted to find a way for the law’s enforcement to be postponed. Finally they found this way,” he said.

Just like several other hilly plots in Tambon Srisaket in Nan’s Na Noi district, the land was once a pristine forest but had more recently been cleared to pave the way for the cultivation of maize, and was tilled until it was almost beyond repair.

The land is dry and the soil so hard that a hoe can only dig into it inch by inch, and the weather is extremely hot under a scorching sun.

A further complication is that the land sits on overlapping territory claimed by both Sri Nan National Park and the villagers in the tambon, resulting in hesitation and uncertainty over the right to use the land.

Yet, without any light at the end of the tunnel, the country’s self-sufficiency lead applicator Wiwat Salyakamthorn, now also a deputy agriculture minister, came up with an experiment to introduce a new way of living on such controversial plots. The aim is to try to revitalise the land so that trees can grow at the same time as a more sustainable and non-destructive way of agricultural life begins.

“Ao Job Mue Rak” – or “The First Hit of a Hoe” – is the new project under which Wiwat is attempting to introduce a self-sufficiency lifestyle to the maize growers in Nan, one of the Kingdom’s 13 most-destroyed-watershed provinces, so that livelihoods and the land can both be given a chance to revive.

“Frankly speaking, they’re not wrong [to want to grow maize],” said Wiwat. “The villagers have had to grow maize following global trends. But they were convinced that maize would bring them attractive incomes, without realising that they would instead incur debts and poverty. So, we need to introduce a new approach to living. One hoe can help each of them to bring about a new lease of life.”

Government action

The heavy deforestation in high-topography watershed areas, with Nan being one of the target areas, was first addressed by the junta government in the middle of last year.

According to a Cabinet resolution in July, it was reported that up to 8.6 million rai (1.27 million hectares) of high-mountain watershed areas in 13 provinces had been heavily cleared, with 800,000 encroachers involved.

Almost half of the land was reportedly used to grow maize, and the reported damage mounted to Bt469 billion.

Realising the seriousness of the situation, the government instructed the Agricultural and Cooperatives Ministry and the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to join forces to tackle the problem.

Three key approaches were addressed – reforestation, human care, and sustainable farming development.

The first “Integrated Strategy for Degraded Watersheds on High Topography” was developed and put in place to guide the concerned agencies, under the concept of increasing green areas on degraded watersheds in a sustainable way.

The strategy came with four prime goals. Besides reforesting the 8.6 million rai of degraded watersheds within 20 years, it aims to reduce losses to people’s livelihoods and properties.

It also aims to boost the qualify of life of high-grounders in a sustainable way, while boosting their awareness and participation in forest preservation at the same time.

Wiwat’s experiment is among the models being explored before concluding and drafting a master plan for implementation.

‘Kok Nong Na’ self-sufficiency model

His self-sufficiency lifestyle model, known widely as the “Kok Nong Na” model, comprises hills, water sources, and fields for growing crops.

Channels would be dug on the land first, so that they help receive and retain rainwater in the soil, making it moist enough to support the regeneration of trees and crops.

Fields would be shaped accordingly, and the crops would be more selective and truly sustain life, such as rice for the villagers’ own consumption without them having to buy it any more.

The “three forests with four benefits” principle would then be introduced to help overhaul the whole ecosystem.

“I just wish that we can have a model that people see as helpful and help introduce it elsewhere. Change cannot happen if people are simply forced to change their ways,” Wiwat said.

Songtam Suksawang, director of the National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department’s National Parks Office, said Wiwat’s pilot project is complementary to what other agencies, including his own, have been doing.

New management of land use is seen as being as critical as property-rights management, Songtam said, adding that Wiwat’s model will suggest the way forward when currently pending regulations and laws are implemented.

Besides the strategy, Songtam said concerned parties, including the natural resources and environment reform committee that he also works for, were currently developing and putting in place more accommodating laws to support the problem-solving efforts.

Some old laws seen as obstructing the efforts, including the aged National Parks Act, are being amended, alongside the introduction of a new bill on forest communities, the director explained.

Further development of legal tools to support land-use management in such problematic areas is also being considered to reinforce the efforts, he said.

Hope springs eternal

Kaset Yosboonruang, 60-year-old kamnan of Tambon Srisaket, stood on a hill and looked down to the land plot, where channels and reshaped fields were taking shape, before murmuring, “I’m not sure it can help.”

He has not lost hope, however, pointing across the plot in the valley below to another hill, where trees cover the hillside.

It was once a cornfield like this, he said, but trees regenerated and were back on the cleared land following talks and agreements with the forest officials of the park to settle the overlapping-territory issue.

For the rest of the controversial plots in the tambon, up to 10,000 rai in total, including the one below where he was standing, Kaset conceded that a similar ending was still a long way off, but he just hoped that concerned officials helped make things clear in regard to permission to use the land, which was something still seen by the villagers as inconsistent.

What they sought, he stressed, was more choices for utilising the land and getting themselves out of debt and poverty, which were the biggest burdens that should be considered along with the present challenges.

“The project looks good, but will it be here for long? Policies, projects, governments, come and then go. We just desperately need continuity and seriousness among all of them,” said the tambon chief.