Charter proposals for an appointed Senate, an outsider non-elected premier and the mixed-member apportionment (MMA) voting system represent the major shortcomings of the draft constitution which would invite political problems in the future, a seminar held by the Bangkok Post has been told.
Poonthep Sirinupong, a Thammasat University law lecturer, criticised the draft charter which does not require a prime minister to be an MP, and instead makes it compulsory for political parties to unveil up to three prime ministerial candidates each before the election.
In principle, he said, a prime minister candidate should be an MP who had presented party policies to voters before elections.
With the three-candidate rule, voters would not know who the premier will be, Mr Poonthep said, adding the three candidates of each party will be forced to compete against each other for the prime minister's post.
However, Wanwichit Boonprong, a political science lecturer at Rangsit University, supported the proposal to allow voters to see the lists of prime ministerial candidates in advance. Some politicians evade scrutiny, he said.
In the past, some party leaders were not nominated as prime minister candidates while a No.1 party-list MP was not necessarily a party leader.
These tactics were meant to avoid a legal backlash in the event of electoral fraud, Mr Wanwichit said.
Under the 2007 constitution, if a party candidate was found guilty of committing electoral fraud, and a party leader or party executives knew but did nothing to stop it, the penalty was for the party to be dissolved and the party leader and the executives to have their electoral rights suspended for five years.
To avoid any legal backlash prior to the last election, the Pheu Thai Party at the time nominated Yingluck Shinawatra as its No.1 party-list candidate, though she held no party executive post.
However, Mr Wanwichit said the three-candidate list requirement will twist the intentions of voters.
The candidates on the lists may not the ones who voters want to become prime minister and they may be party bagmen who provide financial support instead, he said.
But Pattara Khampitak, a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), argued the candidate lists could help ease political conflict because the public can get to know who the potential prime ministers will be beforehand.
They could be disappointed with "undesirable" prime ministerial candidates if the lists were revealed after the election, he said.
Mr Pattara also said the proposed three-candidate rule is intended to give the public a role in choosing the prime minister indirectly because parties have to pick candidates with the right qualifications in the eyes of supporters or they will not be successful at the polls.
The CDC did not think the proposal would pave the way for an non-elected outsider prime minister to step in, given that parties will determine their own candidates and the parties are unlikely to bring in an outsider.
Regarding the MMA voting system, Mr Poonthep told the forum the voting system will make election campaigns harder for small- and medium-sized political parties.
Sending candidates to run in constituencies nationwide would prove costly for them and if they cannot do it, they would have no chance of winning party-list seats because they would fall short of the number of constituency votes necessary to calculate the percentage of party-list seats.
Some parties might only send unqualified candidates to run in constituency polls only to get the votes for the calculation of its party-list seats, Mr Poonthep said.
The CDC wants to allocate a single ballot for both constituency and party-list MPs.
The CDC caps the total number of MPs at 500, 350 of whom are elected from constituencies and 150 from the party list.
The votes each party receives in all constituencies nationwide will be combined to determine the percentage of seats for each party, based on the total number of 500 House seats.
Mr Poonthep criticised the single-ballot system, saying the method would force voters to choose candidates or parties they do not like.
Giving voters separate ballots for candidates and parties would reflect the real intentions of voters, he said.
Mr Wanwichit said that when all votes are cast and counted, the voting system is likely to benefit medium-sized political parties which will gain seats in both constituencies and the list, giving them more bargaining power to join a government.
At the same time, major political parties are likely to gain fewer seats than in previous polls. Such voting systems are often seen as a way to promote coalition governments and smash the dominant power of the main parties.
Defending the single-ballot system, Mr Pattara said it is meant for parties and their candidates to strive for improvement as they are expected to be able to communicate party policies to voters while parties must also come up with policies that respond to voters' needs.
The story is the last of three parts on the draft constitution.