Chuan blames high number of ruling coalition partners for frequent lack of quorum

In his interview to Parliament Channel, Chuan explained that the coalition of Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha has 19 partners, which is the highest in Thailand’s political history.

The high number of coalition partners made it hard for the coalition to control the presence of government MPs during House meetings and the opposition managed to disrupt meetings when there were a low number of ruling coalition MPs by calling for a quorum check, Chuan explained.

The former premier was speaking about the performance of the House of Representatives during the past four years as it approaches the end of its tenure on March 23. The House tenure began on March 24, 2019.

The speaker said the House had completed eight parliamentary sessions during the past four years and the last session ended on February 28.

Although the House would be dissolved before March 23, it must be regarded that the current House has completed all the parliamentary sessions, Chuan said.

Government controlled MPs well

He said the government had managed to control its MPs in Parliament well during the first three years of the tenure but problems of House meetings collapsing due to lack of quorum happened in the later part of the tenure.

Chuan, himself a former prime minister, said the Prayut coalition had an unprecedented high number of partners because the current Constitution created an electoral system different from what used in the past.

The charter was seen as designed to help coup leader General Prayut to remain in administrative power by using the one-ballot electoral system for both constituency and party-list elections. The charter also provides provisional clauses for the first eight years of enforcement to empower senators to join MPs in electing the prime minister.

Chuan said the one-ballot electoral system allowed up to 26 parties win House seats.

“Under this system, the side with majority House seats formed the government so the coalition has 19 partners and seven parties became the opposition. Normally, a coalition wouldn’t have almost 20 partners,” Chuan said.

With the special provisions, Prayut’s Palang Pracharath Party managed to steal victory from the Pheu Thai, which emerged No. 1 in terms of MPs, to form a coalition with 19 partners.

Chuan added that the problems of the House were also compounded by the fact that more than half of MPs were new faces.

Moreover, after the coup, Thailand had no parliamentary system for five years so the current House had to learn a lot, leading to both positive and negative experiences in their works.

Chuan said the parliamentary system required the government to control its majority in the House well enough to enact laws.

“From the start, this government performed well and the government-sponsored bills were enacted without problems. It could be said almost all government-sponsored bills were passed,” Chuan said.

He said only some bills, which were co-sponsored by opposition MPs, were not passed.

The quorum problem

“In the last year of the tenure, some bills could not be passed because of the lack of House quorum,” Chuan added.

He said the charter requires MPs to identify their presence in the House by inserting their parliamentary ID cards before crucial voting.

He said the opposition managed to use this requirement as a tactic to disrupt House meeting to kill certain bills by not inserting their cards to identify their presence, leading to a lack of quorum.

He said the opposition tactic was later adopted by some coalition partners, who disagreed with certain bills proposed by other partners.

“This was not the right thing to do. MPs should have the courage to be straightforward and vote against the bill instead of using quorum as a tactic to disrupt meetings,” Chuan said.

He explained that the quorum-checking tactic caused controversial bills to remain on the House agenda and also blocked deliberations on other bills.

Senators follow same tactic

Chuan added that the tactic was later also used by senators during the last few joint meetings of the two chambers to disrupt deliberations on a bill seeking to amend the charter to reduce the power of senators.

“Normally, senators helped ensure that the joint meetings would have enough quorum but during the past few joint meetings, the senators did the same thing … the charter amendment bill became the only bill that could not be passed in joint meetings during the past four years,” Chuan said.

He regretted that several useful bills could not be passed because of politicking and quorum-checking, such as the railway transport bill and the bill on bank cheques.

“But for the lack of quorum, these useful bills would have definitely been passed. It’s unfortunate,” Chuan said.