The Election Commission (EC) has already drafted rules and regulations to keep peace and order during the referendum since it cannot enforce the 2009 Referendum Act during the period.

The EC has presented three options to punish electoral offenders: issuing orders by the National Council for Peace and Order, which may not be accepted by the public; passing an Act, which may take too much time; or opting for the royal decree, which is faster.

Supreme Commander General Sommai Kaotira said no military unit will order military personnel to vote to accept or reject the charter draft.

He said the military was only campaigning to encourage them and their families to exercise their voting rights.

“We want a high turnout of voters, but are not influencing their voting decision in any way,” he said.

There will be no provision for any special body or mechanism in a revised draft of the new constitution, chief constitution drafter Meechai Ruchupan said yesterday.

He said the necessary mechanisms are already there in the draft.

The Constitution Drafting Commission chairman was speaking to reporters after meeting Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam to discuss a Cabinet proposal for an “exception to the rule” during the post-election transitional period. They met for about two hours at the Council of State office.

Meechai said the CDC would include proposals from the Cabinet, National Legislative Assembly and National Reform Steering Assembly in the transitory provisions, once drafters had resolved they have to. “For now, we have not reached that chapter yet. But we’ll see after the draft is done.” he said.

Earlier yesyerday, Wissanu warned constitution drafters that they would have to shoulder the responsibility if their refusal to revise the draft charter as suggested by the Cabinet led to political unrest again.

He said the last of the Cabinet’s 16-point proposals was aimed at preventing a volatile political environment like that seen before the military coup of May 2014.

“It will be a pity if sufficient measures are not there to deal with some violent incident in the future. If the CDC maintains that its draft is perfect, that is fine. But they have to take the responsibility if bad things happen one year later,” Wissanu said.

At their meeting, Wissanu told Meechai there should be some flexibility during the first years after the constitution comes into force, including perhaps appointment of senators.

Wissanu said after the meeting that “flexibility” should be included in the Transitory Provisions chapter.

“It was a proposal from the National Legislative Assembly that senators be appointed. I told Meechai today that perhaps during this ‘turning point’, we should have flexibility by using another Senate recruitment method [other than what the CDC has written in the draft that senators are cross-selected among 20 social groups],” the deputy prime minister said.

“In the normal clauses, it can be stipulated that there should be an election across the country but in the Transitory Provisions we might want to use another method during the first few years,” he said.

However, he added that these were just examples that he had used to explain the matter to Meechai. “It was nothing serious,” Wissanu added.

Another point he discussed with Meechai, he said, was that perhaps the way CDC had made any constitutional amendment difficult was rather “uncomfortable”. He suggested that it be written in the Transitory Provisions and only apply during the transitional period too.

The deputy PM said Meechai had not consulted with him about anything. The CDC chief had only asked about the purpose and the intention behind the Cabinet’s recommendations about the charter draft.

Wissanu said, his response was, “a recommendation was a recommendation. If things are so tangled, maybe we can try it this way”. He was referring to the Cabinet’s recommendation No 16, which proposed that the country have a constitution for ‘two periods of time’. One is for a normal situation and another for an extraordinary one.

Also, he said he had told Meechai to review the problems facing the country and review his work whether served to solve those.

“If he [Meechai] thinks that the charter draft has the answers to the issues and he would not comply [with the Cabinet’s proposal], it’s fine,” he said, stressing that it was totally up to CDC how they write the constitution draft.

Asked if Meechai looked “convinced” and would “comply”, Wissanu replied, “I think it was I who was convinced and complied with Meechai or maybe we both leaned towards one another.”

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has affirmed that he wants a transitional period of five years in order to ensure that the measures suggested by the National Council for Peace and Order are implemented, according to an NCPO source.

It is likely that the NCPO will retain its power over the next post-election government although it may be transformed into a committee, political observers said.

The observers also said the government appeared to be pressuring the CDC to add a transitional clause to the junta’s liking. Even if the draft constitution fails to pass the national referendum, the junta and General Prayut as the NCPO head could put together a new constitution based on the CDC’s draft, they said.

Wissanu yesterday said a transitional period of five years as suggested by the prime minister was “more than enough” to allow positive changes in the country’s politics.

He said that if the political crisis still continued after the next four to five years, “you can’t expect Thailand to be peaceful after that”.

Wissanu, who is in charge of the government’s legal affairs, said he expected the next elected administration to be able to cope with future problems with the help of “strengths in the new constitution”.

He said the current situation was not suitable for talks between the conflicting sides. “I hope the mood will change in the next three to four years. I believe the people’s mood will change.”

In response to criticism that the transitional period would mean Thailand would have only “half democracy”, Wissanu said “it’s better to have half a glass of water than no water at all”, quoting late former prime minister Samak Sundaravej after the promulgation of the 1978 Constitution.

He noted that the 1978 charter had been in use for 14 years – the longest of any Thai constitution – because it was flexible and compromising.

Speaking to Reuters in Singapore, Thaksin, 66, said the junta lacked the vision and talent to fix an economy in disarray.

“It is a government with no freedom and no pool of talent to drive the economy,”Thaksin said. “The longer they stay, the longer economic hardship is going to be there.”

A decade of turbulent politics has surrounded Thaksin and his sister Yingluck, another former prime minister; her government was ousted in the 2014 coup.

Thaksin yesterday denied long-standing reports he had struck a backroom deal with the military to leave his personal and family interests untouched in exchange for a retreat from politics.

“We are not talking. I have never telephoned anyone. I don’t know why I would get in touch with them and I have no need to,” he said.

Thaksin has lived in self-imposed exile for nearly eight years, mainly in Dubai.

In 2010, he urged his “red shirt” followers to mobilise protests calling for elections that ended in a bloody confrontation with the military in which more than 90 people died.

His legacy of village welfare and cheap rural loans made him a hero in red-shirt country in the rural North and Northeast, where he still commands huge respect.

But critics, including the urban elite, accuse Thaksin, a former police colonel turned telecommunications tycoon, of widespread corruption. He was sentenced to two years in prison in 2008 for graft in a land purchase case, which he says was politically motivated.

The junta has promised elections next year. But some critics are sceptical, saying the military’s objective is to block Thaksin’s allies from returning to power and to consolidate the military’s own powers by writing them into a new constitution.

Thaksin’s decision to speak to media this week has riled the junta.

Thaksi n, who said he spends his time meeting up with old friends including former heads of state, said he had adjusted to his nomadic life and made, on average, 120 landings a year in his private jet.

He believes he will return to Thailand one day but won’t go back to face charges or live under house arrest because of alleged assassination attempts.

“I am confident I can return,” he said. “I am not the bad person I am accused of being.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha rejected Thaksin’s call for talks for reconciliation and seeking political solutions to the country.

Thaksin last week gave interviews to The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, criticising the charter draft as merely a charade. He said he would like to negotiate with the government to find solutions to political problems the country faces.

Besides Reuters, Thaksin yesterday gave an interview to Al Jazeera.

Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said he did not believe there would be any lobbying from foreign countries to pressure Thailand over the junta’s “road map to democracy” after Thaksin criticised the charter draft.

Don said foreign communities believed the issue was domestic and the internal affair of Thailand.

“They know we talk to reach understanding. No one wants to interfere in our internal affairs.”

Don said foreign counterparts had told him that the charter draft had strong points such as anti-graft measures, as they believed corruption is a major obstacle to development.

Former foreign minister Noppadon Pattama dismissed reports that Thaksin was making political movements now to offer to end his political role so that his |sisterYingluck would not face confiscation of Bt250 billion in assets over her government’s rice-pledging scheme.

“It is totally nonsense. I believe this is the mudslinging work of the intelligence unit against the two former PMs,” Noppadon said.

Noppadon said Thaksin made the comment out of concern about the country’s future and not of his own or Yingluck’s.

Deputy Prime Minister General Tanasak Patimapragorn had earlier insisted that the government, as a law-enforcement agency, would not be in the position to talk with a |person who ran away after a court sentenced him to jail.

PRIME MINISTER General Prayut Chan-o-cha yesterday affirmed the country needs a special mechanism to advance reforms during a five-year transitional period.

“It [mechanism] could be a new panel or Senate or whoever to control the direction,” he said, adding that the mechanism would help guide the next government.

The instruments to do this could come in the form of clauses included in a provision on the transition to make it easier to amend, Prayut suggested after a Cabinet meeting.

The premier stressed his intention to step down when the term of his government ends.

“How could I stay then? I don’t know, [they] have to consider this,” he said, when asked if his government would stay after an election scheduled in July next year.

The special mechanism Prayut mentioned is similar to the National Strategic Reform and Reconciliation Commission (NSRRC)- or “crisis panel” proposed in Borwornsak Uwanno’s rejected charter draft, political analysts said. The panel would be given special powers over the executive and legislative branches to intervene in a political crisis, in addition to its normal task of working on reform and reconciliation.

The committee members included the parliament president, the Senate speaker, the prime minister, the supreme commander, the army, navy, air force and national police chiefs, a former prime minister, a former parliament president and a former Supreme Court president.

Prayut was responding to a controversy last week over his Cabinet’s proposal to the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) on the charter draft – to add a special set of rules or an exception to the rule for a transition period after the next general election, without explaining how this would happen or how long it would be before the country returns to a full democracy. It said the mechanism would help prevent the kind of turmoil seen prior to the May 2014 coup.

The premier thinks it is necessary to have some “fritters” included in one of the charter draft’s sections to prevent the kind of political deadlocks the country saw prior to the 2014 coup, a government source quoted the premier as saying. “I believe the CDC will learn from the mistakes of the NSRRC provision in the previous, aborted draft,” the source said. “The mechanism shouldn’t stir concerns and fears among the public.”

A controversial point in the proposal also suggested that there should be “a certain level of MPs elected to create balance”. The government source told The Nation that the phrase implies that MPs and senators should come from different sources in a bid to prevent political influence in Parliament.

While MPs would come from an election, senators could be elected indirectly, the source said, as it could be assured that senators who came to office this way would be qualified via intensive screening of candidates. The source’s response coincides with a proposal by some members of the National Legislative Assembly and the National Reform Steering Assembly on the charter draft to have an appointed Senate in order to ensure the junta will have at least 200 senators supporting the junta after an election, according to a source close to the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).

The proposal stated that Parliament should consist of only constituency MPs and appointed senators and both Houses should be able to choose the premier, who could be a member of either House, the source said. However, an official told The Nation he had never heard of such a proposal. Academics called the idea “insane” and impossible to work without negative repercussions.

‘Problems not new to us’

Attasit Pankaew, a lecturer in political science at Thammasat University, said it was possible the NCPO feared there may be unrest after the election, so they proposed that the country have a transitional period during which they be allowed to retain some control. “But in my opinion, the country does not need the transition. It is not like democracy or these problems are new to us. I believe we can manage [without it],” he said.

He said the NCPO’s move showed they were not confident about the laws and regulations proposed. They may not be efficient in terms of the issues the country had to tackle, so they wanted to retain some control.

“The best solution would be that they write laws and regulations acceptable to all parties so the country can move on,” Attasit said, This was better than writing laws that upset people. Jade Donavanik, an adviser to the current CDC and a member of the previous charter-drafting panel, expressed disbelief when he first heard about the model. He said it was “too extreme and just impossible”.

Despite scepticism, Jade said: “They can write anything at all in the constitution, but they cannot force it into real practice. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,” elaborating also that it was very difficult for such an extreme model to work – as many people were likely to oppose it, he said.

“Eventually, if things cannot go on, another revolution takes place,” he remarked.

Jade, thus, suggested that the best way to pursue “extraordinary rule” was via “extraordinary measures” that only apply when the country faces the same old vicious cycle such as Parliament failing to function or street protests. Yuttaporn Issarachai, another political scientist, said that by proposing such a model, the NCPO was not being well-rounded. “It might sound effective and efficient in terms of administration, but would not be in terms of democracy.” He said democracy was about the “means” – including people in the process – rather than the “end”, which may not always be the most desired result.

He feared such a model could itself cause political turmoil. The NCPO was looking at the matter from only its perspective and not from that of others. That’s why it did not occur to them their semi-democracy model was problematic.

He compared the draft with something that could have been written in North Korea.

“I think the situation will not allow them to enjoy the power that much because of the way they run the country. Any regime that is careless about their own people will not last long,” he said.

The military government headed by General Prayuth Chan-ocha came to power in May 2014 in a coup in which Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was removed from office.

“The military keep urging publicly that they want to do reconciliation … They want to move the country forward, but this is one-and-a-half years [later], and there is no sign of reconciliation,” Thaksin told Al Jazeera.

“Vice versa …They are really siding with one side and then pressuring the other side.”

And such power could not help reconciliation because that could only materialise via dialogue, which concerned parties had to take part in. More importantly, a universal rule, which could apply to all equally, needed to be assured to facilitate it – and this was a charter that had to be acceptable for all, he said.

Yutthaporn said the recommendation by Cabinet was likely to cause the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) more controversy, as the public was sceptical about attempts to create a special body that could overrule future governments, he said.

The recommendation, he said, was an attempt to address a problem with an administrative approach, but it may not work well under democratic principles.

Meanwhile, Democrat Party deputy leader Ongart Klampaiboon also noted yesterday that the CDC should scrap the proposal in order for the charter draft to pass a national referendum.

The proposal had been questioned by the public, he said, on whether it would prolong the power of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).

The charter drafters could maintain productive, beneficial clauses on all well-rounded anti-corruption mechanisms, stricter qualifications for candidates for political positions, severe punishment against election fraud, he said.

Pheu Thai figure and former foreign minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul claimed that the charter draft, if enacted, would prevent an elected government from efficiently administering the country for the people.

Surapong said the NCPO should engage in talks with concerned parties to find the best way out of an impasse so the country can move forward, adding that the government had failed to run the country well, as economic problems had become more severe.