Not criticizing The Dictator

The puppet National Legislative Assembly has worked hard for the military junta. Passing laws, delaying laws, speaking the junta’s language and being loyally anti-democratic.

So deeply committed to their junta employers is this hotch-potch of lazy generals, rewarded anti-democrats and automatons that, as Khaosod reports, “[m]ore than three quarters of [all] the bills made into law by junta-appointed legislators have been passed without a single vote of opposition…”. As the report has it: “The Internet Reform Dialog group found that 77 percent of 292 bills have been passed in their third reading without a single nay…”.

One of the appointed marionettes says this is the wrong way to look at it. Wallop Tangkananuwat reckons the process of deliberation is important and that the vote represents just a decision on the NLA’s final outcome.

That may be true, but the lack of any opposing voices means that almost no bill is actually debated by the somnolent puppet legislators. Relatively few major changes to the junta’s bills, unless approved by The Dictator.

Even the Democrat Party’s Nipit Intarasombat, “an eight-time former MP with the Democrat Party, said those results would only appear normal before a parliament appointed by a dictator.” He adds: “That’s how the system work[s]. In a dictatorial system, it would be abnormal if there are voices of opposition.” He’s right.

The iLaw’s Narongsak Niamsorn says it is also a result of the simple fact that “of the current 248 NLA members, 144 are active-duty or retired military officers, 66 are government officials and 11 are from the police force. That adds up to 221 – 90 percent – of the body’s 248 members.”

It is a rubber-stamp parliament that dare not criticize the junta or The Dictator. But then the NLA has no reason to criticize, being peas of the same anti-democratic pod.