Today mark four years since the constitutional referendum and the ramifications from the undemocratic social contract is clear, the coup-makers are still in power.
After they overthrew an elected government, the junta drafted a constitution that allowed them to maintain its power in the guise of a civilian government with support from a pro-military party.
The constitution allowed them to do that by an electoral system that made it much harder for any single party to win the majority.
This was designed to ensure that one party, namely Thaksin’s Phue Thai, does not win, and to cement that, they also dissolved the Thai Raksa Chart just to be sure.
The constitution also paved the way for the previous junta leader to be the current prime minister.
First, the constitution was transformed so that all of the current senates were handpicked by none other than Prayut’s right-hand man, Prawit.
The junta then used these 250 appointed proxies to “vote” for the new prime minister; and who else would it be if not their boss?
Apart from that, the now-famous Section 256 that the students have been yelling about also stipulates that any amendment to the constitution requires the approval of at least one-third of the senate, or 84 senators to be precise.
It does not take a law professor to see that this is ridiculous.
What was more apparent, however, were the junta’s repressive actions to silence the “No” campaign during the referendum in 2017.
Back then, only the “Yes” campaign was allowed to promote the constitution with their propaganda.
There was also an underlying message that if you do not take this one, the junta will revert back to the ones that were even more undemocratic in the past.
The “No” campaign was effectively silenced as any campaign against the draft could land them in jail.
More than 100,000 police officers were deployed on the streets, dozens have been detained, and any local media saying anything else but “Yes” have been blocked.
The votes were being counted by the junta’s appointed agencies and officials. The result came back at 61.45 per cent in favor even though there was a low turnout of about 55 per cent out of around 50 million eligible voters.
The results shocked everyone who understood what it meant.
The junta, which now leads the current coalition government, promised that the charter would be amended. It has now been four years and the only reason why it has been brought up again was because of the students, not the politicians.
Main oppositions of Phue Thai and Move Forward are now using the momentum from the students to push for the amendment in parliament and Prayut has already said that his government is willing to comply.
But changes won’t be swift as the parliament is still dominated by the coalition party and the Democrats continue to break their election promise.
There is also no hope from the appointed senators because why would they stop the money from flowing into their pockets by listening to the people’s demand when they were appointed by the junta?
Any changes would be minimal and any major operation to remove the coup-makers’ claws via the use of this constitution is going to be next to impossible if this government is still in power.
However, there is something different this time around. Oppositions and critics can talk about it now and the people are listening to what is wrong with this constitution.
The students already gave us what our politicians have failed to do for the past four years and that is a voice. A voice to say that there is something wrong with this constitution.
If the junta wants to shut down that voice again, they can certainly do so as the State of Emergency is still intact.
But how many parties and voices will they have to silence until they realize that the noise will never go away?
Wissanu is now saying that setting up a new charter drafting assembly is equal to amending Section 256 which would require a referendum.
Should we try it again?
