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The cybernationalism in social networking and the war of words in the traditional media are furthermore booming and easily propagating more hatred and lies. These are tearing people apart. Censorship can be abused and manipulated. Creating transaction cost by taxing and penalised wrongdoing with fines based on its traffic volume may fund social mentors, creditable rating and truth tracking volunteers in all media space. Let's market for information and trinity sources of legitimacy works.

Even in the US, there were a few silent "coups" and a civil war. In 1787, for example, after emptying its Treasury and the increasing threat of a social revolution caused by the power struggle between states, their founding fathers met behind closed doors in Philadelphia and came up with a consensus of a more effective central government from what type of democratic representation. To avoid the tyranny of the majority is to avoid permanent fixed majorities. To avoid the tyranny of the minority is to empower them to stop or slow down things. The aim is the effective government to guard one part of society against the injustice of the others.

After many years of civil wars and power struggle in the UK political system, for another instance, the House of Lords (or Senate) is still partly appointed by the Queen and by hereditary peers modelled from the ancient monarchy council.

As a matter of fact, the UK constitutional Reform Act 2005 provides for a Supreme Court of the UK to take over some existing roles of the Law Lords and others for politi¬cal oversight. In both the US and UK cases, compromises have to be made along the way and its political society has to be developed organically to gain acceptance over hundreds of years.

A simple separation of power like the US presidential system is not effective in the parliamentary system because most of the ministers come from the majority side of the elected members of the parliament. A few independent agencies that have been select¬ed and approved by elected MPs are ineffectively looking after the minority side interest and corruption allegations. The opposition, by design as a minority, has no power. So people take their grief to the streets.

In essence, both executive branch ministers and legislators are more or less from the same group of people. The remedy may be to decentralise the power selectively into different branches in different modes of election and different principles of action, but to maintain many authorities and issues to uphold national unity, monarchy and interest at the centre.

On the structure, the national government should take care of defence, monetary and fiscal policy, information and communication and natural resources for national interest. The provincial level government and councils may look after schools, public transport, parks, hospital, welfare, roads, food and drug inspections, corrections and liquor control. The shared power and responsibilities should have public participation and be administratively implemented with the ability to raise tax and funding at its level, at least in its limited sense.

The provinces that are unable to be selfgoverned for whatever reasons may remain at the national government. On the legislative branch, elected officers in each institution (eg MP, senate, kamnans, etc) may be rotated to retire in different intervals every 2 to 5 years in an arbitrary manner. Frequent minielections may prove to be effective and provide regular checks and balances to our political parties, because different voices of people will be heard in many parts of the country at different times. After all, the only thing that our politicians and lawmakers fear the most is the election.

The upper house or senate should remain as in the UK model with partly appointed officials for the voices of experts and bureaucrats, while elected senators may serve for different terms (two to five years) as the watchdog of the big and longterm picture and corruption. If the parliamentary system is regularly rotated in the flow concept, the executive branch would be more responsive to different voices of diverse people.

In conclusion, democracy works fine if everyone agrees on the rule of engagement. Since some choices have to be made, we should not leave it to either imposed (tyranny) or arbitrary (random of procedure-driven). Institutions designed should be humanly devised rules that shape and direct human interactions.

The actual choice of institutions is hard to choose with countless ways to shape and form. I have provided some examples of a parliamentary flow system and thoughts on sharing power and responsibility. It is a start to think in terms of compromising and rule changing to be accepted by all rather than confrontation because at the end of the day we need to coexist for peace and prosperity, especially in the midst of global financial crisis.

(End of a twopart series. The first part was published on Thursday.)

(Pongsak Hoontrakul is senior research fellow at Chulalongkorn University's Sasin. Any comments could be sent to Pongsak@Hoontrakul.com)