More charter change delay

A joint parliamentary decision to seek a legal ruling on whether politicians can form a charter drafting panel to make wholesale amendments without the need for a referendum means the process returns to square one.

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Parliamentarians in both the upper and lower chambers last week debated the issue extensively, yet the result, 150:364 votes, means no progress has been made on the charter amendment effort. This is extremely discouraging.

The 304 parliamentarians who endorsed a charter court ruling citing Section 210 of the charter governing the court's jurisdiction over the matter are from Pheu Thai and the coalition partners, while 150 parliamentarians who opposed the move comprise 12 senators in the progressive camp, except for Boonrit Maneechai who abstained; 137 from the People's Party, and one from the Fair Party.

At the same time, most of the 124 abstention votes came from the blue bloc senators, and the rest saw two from the Democrats, and one each from the Prachachart and Palang Pracharath parties.