Constitution Drafting Assembly member Chirmsak Pinthong, standing, becomes angry at the limited debate time allocated to proponents of a parliament with no Senate, during the CDA meeting yesterday. His group later walked out, causing the session to lack a

Four hundred MPs will come from constituencies and 80 from a proportional system of representation.

The Constitution Drafting Committee's earlier proposal was for 400 MPs, with 320 coming from constituencies and 80 from the party list.

This differs from the 1997 Constitution, which had 500 MPs consisting of 400 from constituencies and 100 from the party list.

Controversy over the allocation of debating time caused a walkout of some CDA members, forcing yesterday's session to be suspended for two hours.

CDA member Chirmsak Pinthong led the walkout after 90 minutes of the morning session. He was trying to convince other members to back his bid to reject the existence of the Senate.

He disagreed with the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), whose draft supports the parliamentary system with two bodies, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Chirmsak said history had proved neither non-elected nor elected senators had provided much benefit for the nation.

Only the House was enough to run the legislative tasks because its committees and the Council of State had overseen and checked legal affairs, he said, adding it was unnecessary to have a Senate.

Before Chirmsak had concluded his debate, CDA deputy chairman Decho Sawananont as the session's chair interrupted, pointing out that Chirmsak had exceeded the 10 minutes given to each member.

Chirmsak responded by alleging Decho had violated a "back-door agreement" on Wednesday, which would allow each member to debate for more than 10 minutes. Decho denied that such an agreement had been reached.

Decho then called for a vote on whether CDA members would agree with the CDC version, which backed the system of the Senate and the House.

The result was 44 to 7 votes in favour of the CDC.

Chirmsak called the voting "unfair" because he and other members who had backed his bid had not voted due to no agreement being settled between Decho and him.

He then decided to walk out of the session after Decho prohibited him from continuing the debate. Some CDA members followed Chirmsak.

A member then called for a count of the members attending the session - 42 of the 100 members were still present. With less than half the members, the session was halted about 11am.

The session was restarted at 1pm by another CDA deputy chairman, Seri Suwanpanont taking the stand and replacing Decho in a bid to ease the tension.

Weerayut  Chokchaimadon

The Nation