THAILAND: Voters say 'yes' to army-backed constitution
Updated
Thai voters have given their support to the country's new constitution following Sunday's referendum, although the turnout was lower than expected. Just under 60 percent of the country's 45-million eligible voters cast their ballot, and of those, just under 60 percent said yes to the new military-backed constitituion. The vote was the first since prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted last September -- and the government's promised the poll will be followed by elections to restore democracy later this year.
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speakers: The ABC's Karen Percy in Bangkok
PERCY: It certainly was a pretty smooth process and went pretty much in line with how the junta had anticipated. There were certainly some areas that they perhaps were a bit surprised about. Certainly the north east of the country where it was rejected pretty resoundingly this charter, and that's not surprising because that's an old stronghold of Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai party. But in the main people did listen to what the government had to say, they came out to vote, there was something like 25-million of them. Prime Minister General Surayud Chulanont said at the outset that he wanted to see more than 50 per cent of eligible voters, he certainly got that, and he wanted to see those who did come out give it a good thumbs up. And that did happen though you could argue the toss about the numbers and how significant they are and whether they really do put a great yes stamp on this constitution.
PODGER: The constitution itself, can you briefly recap for us what people were voting for? What were the main features of the new constitution?
PERCY: They were essentially voting on a new system that was really affecting political parties as much as anything else, and the role of the prime minister. Under the last constitution there was no limit on how long a prime minister can be in office. This constitution limits a prime minister to two terms or a total of eight years. There are also a shake-up of the parliament, there are reduced numbers in the House of Representatives, and also the senate, so there are fewer elected politicians as well as in the senate it used to be that all senators were elected. Now half of those will be appointed. There's also going to be beefing up of the independent institutions, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the military. Now there are plenty of provisions that say that there are these rights for people and those rights for peoples, this in the bill of rights, but essentially if the army, the armed forces and the various security agencies determine there's issues of national security all bets are off the table when it comes to human rights and the protections of Thais. So that's one of the areas that there's great concern that other laws will be able to essentially override the constitution if it's deemed to be in the national security. Who determines that? The military, so this is very much seen as something that will help to cement the military and its role in politics and in government for another five to ten years. But Thai people basically seem to have said you know what, that's probably the case but let's fact it we've had 17 or more coups since 1932, the military's not going to back away from politics at the moment. I guess there's a bit of just accepting that the military does have a role and should have a role regardless of whether some people in this country think that is not a good idea at all.
PODGER: Would it be fair to go as far as sections of the media and the government in Thailand are going to say that this vote represents a public endorsement of last year's coup?
PERCY: Not at all, I don't think that's at all true. I think the media, particularly the broadcast media, we have five television stations here, local television states, every one of them is run by a section of the government or is owned and run by the military. So certainly the television media doesn't have a huge amount of credibility and have been great rah-rah supporters of this referendum and this constitution the whole way. Usually the Thai papers are much more open, they can be extremely critical of the government, but I think there is a sense that there needs to be this rallying around and this is going to be a good thing for Thailand, and I think even the foreign press and those analysts who are deemed to be a bit more independent if you like are admitting that yes, this buys probably another year of stability or a return to stability. But let's not forget that it was around this time last year that the military, the generals were starting to plot their coup and it was right after the coup that people sort of said oh, thank goodness for that, we'll have calm and stability. And here we are 11 months later and we don't have calm and stability. And even the people I spoke to, we were in Pattani province, which is the sort of the nearest province if you like from Bangkok, and we were talking to some voters there and it's interesting, the people there were voting differently, some were voting yes, some were voting no, but all of them said to us that we want the military out of the government. The economy is not as strong as it was, there's absolute concern about foreign investment and limits on foreign investment and that is being seen, you know people don't want the military running their government.
PODGER: And just briefly Karen the government has been promising for some time that Sunday's referendum will be followed by democratic elections, and it's been widely suggested those could be held in December. Will they now go ahead as promised?
PERCY: I think they will, I think there's certainly determination from Prime Minister General Surayud Chulanont, remembering he came out of retirement as a military man and was really sort of almost strong-armed into taking this job. He didn't want to be the prime minister when the coup happened last year, he's certainly showing absolutely no indication that he wants to stay on, and he is definitely pushing for a December election. There are a couple of complications in December; firstly King Bhumibol, the revered and beloved king of this country, his 80th birthday is in early December, there will be celebrations and commemorations the like of which this country has not seen. So the timing in December is going to be interesting. There are two dates being put up here; one is December 16 of December 23rd. December 16 is probably too close to the King's birthday, then there are others who would argue well the closer you have it to the King's birthday the less likelihood there is of violence and people taking to the streets, because it would be seen to be dishonouring the King. So they're determined to do it in December, but you never know, it may well happen in January. But the further it gets pushed out the less and less happy people will be, and they showed after the coup last year that it didn't take much for the Thai people to go from supporting what the military had done to turning on them and saying actually we don't think this is a very good idea. So I think they'll be determined to do it as quickly as possible but there are other events that they need to take into consideration.
