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A COMMITTEE appointed by Thailand’s military rulers said yesterday that the country’s new 200-member senate will be nominated and not directly elected by voters.
The new senators will be chosen from pools of candidates including former premiers, ex-military leaders and representatives from different professions, committee spokesman Lertrat Ratanavanich told reporters on Wednesday.
Drafting the new constitution is being carried out by the 36-person committee hand-picked by the junta after it overthrew the civilian government and abolished the last charter in last May’s coup.
Under the last constitution, half of the 150-member senate was directly elected and the rest appointed. Now, there will be no place for election.
The new senate structure has been designed to limit the power of elected politicians in the parliament.
It follows years of landslide electoral triumph by political parties allied with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party.
The power struggle between the military-backed upper and middle class and Thaksin’s pro-democracy supporters has fuelled the sometimes violent political conflict over the past decade.
“There’s a likelihood that the Pheu Thai Party will win again once there’s an election, so they are designing the constitution to do whatever it takes to limit the power in parliament of the elected politicians,” warned Kan Yeunyong, executive director of the Bangkok-based think tank Siam Intelligence Unit.
Completed, the constitutional draft will be reviewed by the military-appointed national reform council, the cabinet and the junta leaders.
