NLA chief: MP election bill delay paves way for primary voting

By Khanittha Theppajorn 
The Nation

 

National Legislative Assembly (NLA) president Pornpetch Wichaicholchai on Monday defended the postponement of the enforcement of the MP election bill by 90 days, saying it provided time for political parties to prepare themselves for the new primary voting system.

 

The charter stipulates that the election must be held within 150 days after the enforcement of the related laws, so the extension of the enforcement of the MP election bill was to give parties enough time to complete what was required before moving ahead to the election, Pornpetch said.

 

If they had not been given the extra time, that might be used an excuse to waive primary voting within parties, which is expected to pave the way for more democratic and participatory politics.

 

Pornpetch declined to comment on the Constitution Drafting Commission’s comments against the changes to the grouping of Senate candidates by the NLA’s law-vetting committee.

 

He said the committee told him that there would not be a problem of collusion or fraud under the changes.

 

The CDC proposed the grouping of candidates into 20 professional guilds, but the NLA cut the number of groups down to 10.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/politics/30337404

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-01-29

Or, the ban on political activity could have been dropped and no delay would have been required. Do these people actually expect anybody to believe the nonsense that they spew on a daily basis?

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15 hours ago, brucec64 said:

Or, the ban on political activity could have been dropped and no delay would have been required. Do these people actually expect anybody to believe the nonsense that they spew on a daily basis?

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Dropping the ban would mean scrutiny of the junta, and they could not take that.  Al of Thai society hearing criticism of the junta would hurt their chances of remaining in control of the country.  The idea could be to keep the time short to keep the debate to a minimum.   Debate is not something the Thai army is good at.