Former senator says amnesty for banned MPs also necessary to end
Kaewsan Atipodi, a former charter drafter, has suggested the judicial power to disband political parties and remove politicians' electoral rights should be curbed so politics can return to normal.
Speaking at a seminar held by the Right Livelihood Foundation, Kaewsan said judicial powers could not be used indiscriminately to solve political problems.
A former member of now-defunct Asset Examination Committee, which investigated former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's wrongdoings while in office, Kaewsan said he only agreed with dissolution of the Thai Rak Thai Party, which illegally hired small parties to stand in a 2005 election.
Kaewsan, also a former Bangkok senator, said the Constitution and political party law should be amended to make it more difficult to dissolve parties and remove politicians' electoral rights.
"We should dissolve political parties and ban politicians from standing in the polls only after a court hands down a guilty verdict and wrongdoers are put in jail," he said.
"In addition, there should be interim clauses granting amnesty to those currently banned from politics.
"This could lead the opposition Pheu Thai Party to bring all the red-shirt protesters into the proper political arena [rather than having a protest movement on the streets]," he said.
The colour-coded political fight led to protracted protests and riots in April and May this year, in which about 90 people were killed and 1,900 injured after a crackdown by troops following days of riots.
Besides the Thai Rak Thai Party, three other major parties, namely, People's Power, Chart Thai and Matchima Thipatai, were also disbanded by the Constitution Court.
A total of 220 politicians were banned from politics for a period of five years, including 111 politicians belonging to Thai Rak Thai.
Kaewsan said political fights must return to Parliament and justice must be served for all wrongdoers, regardless of their political colour. Otherwise, the ongoing reforms were unlikely to bear fruit.
Speaking at the same seminar, Nakarin Mektrairat of Thammasat University, said Thailand had weathered tougher political conflicts in the past. He cited the reigns of reformist King Rama V and King Rama VII as times when political rifts were deeper and lasted longer.
There was also worrying political rifts when Pridi Pranomyong and Field Marshal Pibulsongkram were prime ministers, so it would just take time to resolve the current conflict, he said.
Meanwhile, Election Commission (EC) chairman Apichart Sukhagganond had reassuring words yesterday for participants at the EC's political and election development institute, saying the election watchdog was completely neutral.
"The colour-coded politics has stressed me. There've been rumours that I belong to this or that camp, but I repeat that I'm impartial." He added that previous participants in EC programmes also came from diverse political parties.
However, he expressed concern that it was difficult to eradicate vote-buying, largely because politicians and voters had done it for a long time.
The problem was severe in the Northeast, he said, adding: "On the morning of election day, a voter might get hundreds of baht, but as the ballot-box closing time gets nearer, a voter can get up to Bt3,000 to 4,000, which is about Bt20,000 per family."
He said it was important to cultivate new values for the new generation of voters by educating them on the value of not selling their votes.