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The remaining 65 projects of petrochemical, gas pipeline, iron, electricity, and waste treatment are still suspended as they may cause serious health impacts.

  However, if any of the remaining 65 projects pass the health impact assessment as required by Article 67, such projects can request for removal of the court suspension.

On verdict day, the price index of the Thailand Stock Exchange declined, although the price indices of the New York Stock Exchange and other stock exchanges in the world increased on that day as well as the day before. Stockbrokers reported that the performance of our stock exchange that day was negatively impacted by the verdict which implied that it would take quite some time before the remaining 65 projects would be allowed to operate and thus would affect the bottom line of many companies which invest in these projects and whose stocks are listed in the exchange.

More worrisome is the fact that many investors in the 65 projects have also invested a great deal to prevent undesirable environmental and health impacts in accordance with the international standard, as reported to the court, and are concluding that the Thai court is not capable of handling the issue of environment and health impact.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently. If such opinion spreads, the investors' confidence in Thailand would be strongly impaired.

It is necessary for the government to explain to investors that the decision of the Administrative Court is not biased but just meticulously adheres to the requirement of the Constitution.

It happened because, firstly, the court could not make use of any existing official reference as a justified list of industries with or without serious health impact. The list announced by the Ministry of Industry came out only after the impacted parties had already sued various government agencies on the issue, and such a list was announced without any prior public hearing.

Had the list been announced long before the confrontation and with proper public hearing, the court would have comfortably used it as a proper reference for the requirement in Article 67 and the number of projects exempted from the suspension should have been much more than 11. As the court could not adhere to any reference, the court then had to rely on its common-sense at its very best.

The judgement to allow projects of communication, clean energy, and the improvement of environment quality or the reduction of pollution to proceed while further suspending the projects of petrochemical, gas pipeline, iron, electricity, and waste treatment seemed to be a logical use of commonsense since no one can deny that the petrochemical, gas pipeline, iron, electricity, and waste treatment projects do have a potential to generate serious health impacts.

The argument that the investors have already invested a lot to prevent impact on environment and health is a valid one.

However, Article 67 specifies that every project that may have a serious health impact must go through the health impact assessment by qualified experts and receive approval from a certain authority, which has to take into consideration an opinion of the independent body.

The Administrative Court is not, in any way, in a position to determine that all measures on environment and health impact as prepared by the investors are adequate to alleviate the health impact, especially when the judges themselves are not well clued-up on health issues.

Nevertheless, to provide a way out, the court did rule further that if, in the future, any of the remaining 65 projects passes the health impact assessment required under Article 67, such a project can request for the removal of the court suspension.

This last part of the court verdict shows that the court correctly understands the intention of Article 67 of the constitution. Actually, many wellwishers, including myself, have sent a message that the government must move rapidly to make several required arrangements to allow for the health impact assessment in the manner specified in Article 67 so that each project can go through the required assessment when it is ready.

The government did assign various agencies to make the required arrangements including the assessment procedure as well as the establishment of the independent body to scrutinise the assessment result.

Yet, the government did not put enough effort into finalising those arrangements. It did not even propose an act to establish the required independent body in the last Parliament session.

There was an observation that the government did not push the issue because the core party of the government was hesitant that it might lose popularity among voters in the Map Ta Phut area.

This observation was confirmed when the government withheld all arrangements and set up another committee to handle this issue and invited ex-premier Anand Panyarachun to chair the committee.

It is fortunate that the ex-premier understands the urgency of the issue as he had already stated to the media that the committee planned to finalise the proposal to establish the independent body within two weeks.

I believe that all other required arrangements would follow in not too long a period of time. The only concern I have now is the neutrality of the independent body which depends on the quality of its members.

I hope that representatives from the two opposing sides will not be appointed to dominate this independent body and wish that neutral persons who truly understand the meaning of national interest will be recruited into the independent body.

I also hope that the said independent will not be empowered beyond the scope intended for it in Article 67, otherwise things may get stuck further, as it is now.

After the committee chaired by ex-premier Anand has completed its recommendation for various required arrangements, I hope the government will not hesitate to finalise all arrangements and push the required law for the independent body through Parliament soonest, possibly with three readings in one session which is possible as other political parties, including the opposition, are already aware of the urgency of this issue.

All these arrangements must be in place before the required health impact assessment can be performed on the pending 65 projects. Only when the projects pass the assessment,can both investors and people in surrounding communities have a peace of mind as the projects can then start operations without any fear of negative impact on health.

Until next Monday