Updated: Constitutional nonsense

PPT didn’t comment on the Constitutional Court’s recent short ruling, considering it better to await the details.

We do wonder about the odd notion that the court could only release a short note when it announced its decision. In the past, the court has often taken hours to read their full decision. In this case it almost seems like the court was told what to decide and then had to come up with the detailed ruling later.

In the meantime there was speculation about what the court really meant when it decided that amending the constitution needed a referendum to get the parliament the people’s permission for amendment and then, later needed to get referendum approval for the proposed amendments. We should note that the military junta’s 2017 constitution is actually very clear on amendment. Section 256 sets out nine steps to amendment, only one of which involves a referendum, and that paragraph is highly specific:

8. in the case where the draft Constitution Amendment is an amendment to Chapter I General Provisions, Chapter II The King or Chapter XV Amendment to the Constitution, or a matter relating to qualifications and prohibitions of persons holding the positions under this Constitution, or a matter relating to duties or powers of the Court or an Independent Organ, or a matter which renders the Court or an Independent Organ unable to act in accordance with its duties or powers, before proceeding in accordance with (7), a referendum shall be held in accordance with the law on referendum, and if the referendum result is to approve the draft Constitution Amendment, further proceedings shall then be taken in accordance with (7)…

How high?

So all of the court process is no more than another way of preventing amendment and the court has gone along with that and made up new rules that have no relationship to the existing constitution.

We expect the amendment process to stop and the regime to drag out the amendment referendum.

Yet it was a Bangkok Post story that caught our attention. It says: “The court … stipulated that any amendment to Section 256 must have a the same popular mandate upon which the present constitution was founded.”

The court has made this up. It is a royalist concoction.

But, if Section 256 must have a the same “popular mandate” upon as the present constitution was founded, is any legal scholar willing to turn his or her attention to the king’s demanded changes, considered in secret legislative meetings, and changing the constitution, including sections that are meant to be sent to a referendum? Admittedly, that was a draft consitution, but it had been approved by a referendum.

So how is it that the king can engage in random acts of constitutional vandalism while those given constitutional power to amend the constitution are prevented from doing so? Clearly, the Constitutional Court remains a farce, concocting nonsense for its military and palace masters.

Update: As predicted, the parliamentary effort to amend the constitution is now dead.