Peopling Thailand's 2015 Draft Constitution

Abstract

We hope that this constitution will bring about a paradigm shift. (1) Following 22 May 2014 military coup in Thailand, a committee was appointed to draft a new constitution. article reviews competing understandings of Thai that emerged during drafting of new constitution, and attempts to explain why draft constitution was rejected by another military-appointed body in September 2015. It argues that during drafting process, liberal royalists sought to reclaim as in order to create a more moral nation in which elected politicians would be subordinated to popular will. However, this conception was not shared by ruling junta, and in end, military deliberately sabotaged new constitution that they themselves had commissioned. The episode offers telling insights into internal dynamics of Thailand's troubled politics and society. Thailand's abortive 2015 draft constitution was crafted by two closely linked elites: retired and serving army generals who formed core of National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), and civilian legal experts who comprised thirty-six-member Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC). Both of these elites invoked notions of populace in support of their visions for country's future. However, close scrutiny reveals that military notions of prachachon (the people) differed significantly from CDC's idea of phonlamueang (citizens). And neither army nor legal specialists invoked generally understood meanings of contained in ground-breaking 1997 People's Constitution. Prachachon was a term used by army for a depoliticized population, operating under military tutelage. Phonlamueang was a term favoured by royal legalists, connoting active citizens who were dedicated to monitoring abuses by elected politicians, animated by deep-rooted loyalty to nation and monarchy. By contrast, 1997 Constitution was characterized by extensive consultation and popular participation which gave the people a strong sense of ownership. No such participation was envisaged either by military or by CDC in 2015. Nevertheless, there were real tensions between political imaginaries of NCPO and CDC, tensions which contributed to eventual failure of drafting process. Thai Constitutionalism The idea that a new constitution might reset Thailand's politics is far from new: variations on this theme were articulated in 1932, 1974, 1997 and 2007. As this author has argued elsewhere, Thailand is at opposite end of spectrum from monumental, sacralized constitutions of countries such as Japan and United States: short documents that are rarely, if ever, amended. (2) Thailand has an iterative constitution, one that is constantly being changed to reflect political vicissitudes. In a talk given at Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) on 8 April 2015, two leading drafters of proposed new constitution, Borwornsak Uwanno and Navin Damrigan, noted that Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Haiti and Ecuador have all had more constitutions than Thailand's nineteen. They quickly added: This is not something to be proud of. But there are reasons behind that. (3) Why, then, does Thailand find itself in such unlikely company? Constitutionalism is a political disease that has long afflicted Thailand. The disease has two main symptoms: legalism and moralism. Most studies of Thai constitutions and constitution-drafting have focused on ways in which successive drafters have sought to deploy legal engineering to shape politics and society--a rules of game approach. Yet this emphasis on legalism can sometimes occlude moral dimensions of Thai public life, in which quasi-Buddhist rhetoric about advancing virtue and opposing evil is all-pervasive. The 2015 draft constitution, issued on 17 April 2015, was first Thai charter in which legal language was overtly overlaid with a discourse of moralism. …