Tripartite whips to meet Monday to agree on policy debate time
Government, opposition, Senate whips to discuss timeframe for new administration’s policy debate
Chief coalition whip Wisut Chainarun said on Sunday that he will hold a meeting with the opposition and Senate whips on Monday to discuss the timeframe for the new government’s policy debate.
Wisut said the coalition, opposition and Senate whips would meet at 10am on Monday to discuss the length of time to be allocated for coalition and opposition MPs and senators during the debate.
The new government is required by the Constitution to announce its policy statement to Parliament before it can start working. The government has scheduled Thursday and Friday for the policy debate.
Wisut said he would consult with the opposition and Senate whips on the reduction of debate time from the 31 hours allocated by the Srettha Thavisin government.
He said most of the policy statement would be similar to that of the Srettha government, so the debate time should be reduced so that the government could start working on national issues as soon as possible.
“We expect to receive cooperation from the opposition and Senate,” Wisut said.
He said he would try to negotiate with the opposition to reduce its debate time from the 14 hours allocated for the previous policy debate to just 10 hours.
“I expect the debate will not be fierce as it will be just a debate on policy, not a no-confidence debate,” Wisut added.
He said it would not be fair if the opposition used the time allocated for the policy debate to attack the government for failing to implement promises made by the Srettha government.
He said the Srettha government ran the country for just one year, so it would be impossible to implement all of its promises, and there were still three years left.
