Junta-backed Thai charter headed for landslide approval

By Max Constant

BANGKOK (AA) – Thai voters appeared to have approved by a large majority a draft constitution that will open the way for elections at the end of 2017 under a political system tightly controlled by the military, according to unofficial results Sunday evening.

Based on the 90 percent of ballots counted, around 62 percent of voters said “yes” to the draft charter written by a committee of legal experts appointed by the junta that seized power in a coup in 2014, the Khaosod news website reported.

Gothom Arya, a former electoral commissioner and independent political analyst, told Anadolu Agency that the results suggested “a crushing victory for the junta”.

“It clearly brings some legitimacy to them,” he said.

The legitimacy of the military regime had been questioned since it came to power after overthrowing the elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on May 22, 2014.

Academics, media and party leaders on both sides of the political spectrum had criticized the draft as it allows for a military-appointed 250-member senate and for an un-elected “outsider” prime minister.

Despite critics accusing the draft of being undemocratic and prolonging military rule, the only provinces where it appeared to be voted down were those in the country’s northeast -- a fiefdom of the Shinawatra political clan led by Yingluck and her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in a 2006 coup and has been living in exile since 2008.

The draft charter’s approval will in theory allow elections to take place at the end of 2017.

These elections will be organized under a constitutional framework favorable to the military and their allied conservative elites.

After a second question included in Sunday’s referendum was also approved by a clear majority, the senate -- where six seats will be reserved for armed forces and police chiefs -- will be authorized to vote alongside the 500-member lower house to choose a prime minister.

This opens the way for the junta to control the choice of premier if it manages to win over 251 lower house members, and thereby secure the necessary two-thirds majority.

A clause stipulating that the premier can be a non-elected personality -- for instance a retired bureaucrat or a retired military officer -- has given rise to worries that junta chief-cum-Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha -- or Deputy-Prime Minister Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan -- will manoeuver to gain the post after the election.

“The prime minister has said many times that he did not want to maintain himself at the head of the country,” said Arya. “But this promise was never a firm and clear one.”

Some student activists went to polling stations wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words “no to the draft charter”.

A few junta critics even tore their ballots inside the stations and were immediately arrested for breach of the junta’s referendum act -- a crime carrying a maximum jail term of 10 years.

But as results filtered in Sunday evening, most of those opposed to the charter had to acknowledge their defeat.

“I feel very sorry for this result,” Arya, renowned as a pro-democracy campaigner, told Anadolu Agency.

“At the same time, the opposition and the civil society have to draw the lessons from this. They have not enough credibility with the Thai citizens, who have voted ‘yes’ because they want a society with less conflicts,” he added.