Peer vote will proceed despite concerns - Meechai
The peer vote by 2,000 National People's Assembly (NPA) members to name 200 charter drafting candidates will proceed as planned although concerns over a block vote remains unresolved, the legislative speaker said.
"Critics of the voting rules should step forward and suggest ways to prevent the block vote instead of attacking the entire voting system," Meechai Ruchuphan said on Monday.Meechai said he saw little pos¬sibility for 2,000 NPA members to collude and vote uniformly although he was willing to amend the existing rules as a precaution. In regard to an earlier suggestion that NPA members should vote within their four professional groups, the arbitrary grouping might worsen the problem as a smaller group was more susceptible to voting manipulation than a larger one, he said. Furthermore, the arbitrary grouping was banned by the 2006 Interim Constitution, he added. If naming the 200 charter draft¬ing candidates turned out to be lopsided in favour of any profession¬als, the Council for National Security would have the final say to ensure fair allocation of seats when it picked 100 candidates for the Constitution Drafting Assembly, he said. The Nation
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