Last week the junta also proposed a new regulation that, if approved by its own appointed Prime Minister, Surayud Chulanont, will ban future polls on what the public thinks of the draft charter.

If the charter is eventually accepted, the junta will likely claim that as an endorsement of its coup and subsequent actions.

On the other hand, if the draft ends up being rejected, they will blame it on the performance of the Surayud administration, along with old power clique and anti-coup activists. They may capitalise on the upheaval and use it as a pretext to stage yet another coup. How long the people will put up with such a threat is anybody's guess.

No matter how it turns out, one of the most overlooked issues is that the referendum on the charter and the drafting process itself have been an effective time-buying strategy for a regime short on legitimacy.

People put up with the suppression of numerous rights and liberties under the junta because they have been told to wait and see the final draft of the new charter.

The charter saga has also distracted the public from the main issue - the lack of legitimacy of the junta and the regime it installed. Too much time has been spent by the media and the public on the charter's drafting and referendum and too little on other political issues, especially the vicious cycle of coups and corrupt regimes.

This is despite the fact the political crisis faced by the country over the past year or so was clearly not primarily in the nature of a constitutional crisis.

But the media and citizens seem happy allotting most of their time to the debate on a new charter, like obedient pupils playing a game set up for them by the junta without questioning why they ought to play the game at all and what is behind it.

A few distracting remarks or discourses have been made about the draft charter. Well-known law experts with questionable records, such as Bowornsak Uwanno, have urged the public not to pick on minor flaws but to look at the larger picture and endorse the charter as a whole.

For once this writer agrees with Bowornsak, but the larger picture the public ought to pay attention to is not the charter itself, but the context in which it came about and what repercussions it will have on the future of Thai politics.

Examination of the larger context readily reveals that the new charter is the product of a military takeover, with no real people's participation. Yet the Constitution Drafting Assembly shamelessly tries to dub it a "people's constitution".

And what signal will it send to the military and society at large if this charter is endorsed? It will most definitely send the wrong signal that future coups are not just possible but plausible, because the public will accept them and yet another new charter.

As debate continues ad infinitum on the merit or lack of merit of the draft, along with speculation on the referendum's result, the public should bear in mind that they owe it to the younger generation to consider the big picture and the more distant future, and how saying yes or no to this draft charter will affect them.

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation