Either way, Thailand will have a fresh opportunity to devise a new constitution that spells out fundamental democratic principles, establishes the powers and duties of the administrative, legislative and judicial branches of government - complete with a system of checks and balances - and guarantees citizens' rights. However, the choices made by the constitution writers and the CDA will be determined in large part by public opinion and time constraints.

Most people still consider the 1997 Constitution the best-written basic law that the Kingdom has ever had, save for a small number of loopholes that unfortunately were so cynically and expertly exploited by deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai Party. Thailand as a democratic society has learned the painful lesson that there is no such thing as a perfectly foolproof constitution.

The general feeling is that the previous charter - widely known as the "People's Charter", because of its idealistic aspirations and the high degree of public participation that went into its drafting - is not beyond salvaging.

Time constraints will be another important factor influencing the decisions of constitution framers and the CDA. The Council for National Security has set a timetable stipulating that the constitution must be drafted, passed by the CDA, approved by voters in a nationwide referendum and promulgated by September at the latest. This is to ensure that the country has enough time to prepare for the nationwide election that must be held by year's end.

It must be pointed out that once the framers of the new constitution come up with a working draft, it will be debated within the CDA and closely scrutinised by civil-society groups, including academics, the mass media, political activists and civil-rights campaigners. The safest bet is for charter writers and the CDA to model the new constitution on the previous one.

The biggest challenge for charter writers and the CDA is plugging loopholes in the previous charter by finding ways to design "independent" oversight organisations, create effective legal instruments and keep these watchdog agencies honest, impervious to manipulation by corrupt politicians and accountable to the public. The idea is to strike a balance to make sure that the administrative branch is subject to appropriate checks and balances without compromising its effectiveness in running the country and serving the people's best interests. Next, they will have to tackle some of the glaring flaws of the 1997 charter. One such flaw that the new charter must do away with is the requirement for candidates for the House of Representatives to hold a university degree. Such a criterion would disenfranchise most people in the Kingdom from the participatory democratic process. The right to serve as a representative of the people must not be restricted to an elite few.

Other major issues that require careful thought include the desirability of having an elected or appointed Senate, or even whether to scrap the upper chamber of Parliament altogether; whether the electoral system should favour big political parties; and whether constituencies should be redesigned in such a way as to make vote-buying and other types of electoral fraud more difficult to perpetrate.

One issue that is beyond debate is the need for the new constitution to stipulate clearly that the next prime minister must be elected by the House of Representatives from among a group of MPs. Any attempt to design the new charter in such a way that would allow a non-MP to serve as prime minister should be considered an unforgivable betrayal of the public trust on the part of the coup-makers, who promised to restore full democracy to the country. So the framers of the constitution, the CDA and the military council should know better than to cross this line.