Draft Thai constitution draws criticism

To protest the exclusion of a religion clause, more than 3,000 Buddhist monks and other devotees staged a sit-in protest in front of Parliament. Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said he was concerned that the Buddhist protests could lead to political chaos and bloodshed.

The draft will be opened up for debate at public forums across the country before final revisions by a 100-member constitutional assembly in July. Under the government's timetable, it would then be put to a national referendum in September, paving the way for proposed elections in December.

A referendum defeat wouldn't necessarily derail that process, as the military has reserved the right to promulgate any past constitution to take its place, though analysts say a rejection could prove problematic.

Another potential stumbling block is a court ruling due May 30 on alleged electoral fraud by the Democrat Party and Thai Rak Thai, the party founded by Thaksin. The allegations stem from an April 2006 election that was later annulled by the courts. Prosecutors have called for the dissolution of the parties, a move that would anger their supporters.

Among the provisions in the draft constitution that has drawn most flak is a clause on the appointment of the Senate, which became an elected body in 2000. The reformed body would be selected by a committee of top bureaucrats and judges and would, in turn, appoint the heads of powerful independent agencies. Critics say this would entrench the power of Bangkok elites who believe that ordinary voters are too easily fooled by unscrupulous politicians like Thaksin, who won landslides in Thailand's rural north.

One new mechanism included in the draft is a crisis committee of politicians and judges to steer the country through any repeat of last year's upheaval. Another is a two-term limit on a prime minister. The latter seems crafted to stop Thaksin, a two-term winner who once vowed to rule Thailand for 20 years.

"Had this rule been in effect when Thaksin dissolved parliament [last year] he would not have been able to run, because that would have been a third term," says James Klein, country representative of the Asia Foundation. "So that's an escape valve, if you do have someone a lot of people don't like, you know there's light at the end of the tunnel."

Despite the bias against politicians, the draft offers some improvements for civil-society campaigners trying to access the justice system, says Mr. Klein, an expert on the 1997 constitution. It also closes loopholes that allowed politicians to pressure the news media and scraps a requirement for MPs to hold bachelor's degrees, which was hotly contested in 1997.

Still, it remains unclear how this latest charter will fare in a political system fueled by vote buying and influence peddling amid a yawning gap between urban elites and the rural masses.

"In order to have real democracy, elections alone aren't enough," says Somchai Phagaphasvivat, a politics professor at Thammasat University in Bangkok. "As long as the political culture is entrenched in patronage, no matter how well we draft the constitution, in reality it can go bad."

• Material from the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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