By Thai Newsroom Reporters
FORMER PREMIER ANAND Panyarachun today (Mar.6) implied that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha may consider calling it quits for good and leaving the country to the young generations to run.
Anand commented that foreign leaders might unreluctantly decide to step down only if they were publicly taken to task over problem-plagued personalities or policies of their own.
The former premier stopped short of saying whether the current one should resign sooner than later, given sustained pressure from within parliament and without since the last few years.
According to Anand, the army chief-turned-premier and other high-level government figures are “too old to catch up” with today’s attitudes of the young generations whose future, he advised, should be freely determined by themselves and not by the elderly.
“The time of the elderly rulers is already up. Let the young generations set the course of their future and run the country on their own,” the ex-premier said without elaborating.
Nevertheless, Prayut’s critics have predicted that the embattled premier might finally dissolve the House of Representatives and call a general election in 60 days as provided by law much rather than step down in order to keep the current, multiple-party coalition government intact.
Many opposition lawmakers were apparently speculating a House dissolution during the current parliamentary recess or ahead of the next parliamentary term scheduled to reconvene on May 22, partisan sources said.
The election for MPs in consequence of the House dissolution might possibly be held under a certain electoral mode similar to the one applied in the 2019 election which led to the successful naming of Prayut as unelected head of the Palang Pracharath Party-led coalition, the sources said.
The previous election literally secured enormous advantages for small-sized or splinter parties to the extent that their front-line electoral candidates were elected MPs on party-listed mode with only as relatively few as 23,000 votes each whilst another electoral system currently being sought by large-sized and medium-sized parties such as Pheu Thai Party, Palang Pracharath Party, Democrat Party and Bhumjaithai Party will call for as many as 350,000 votes to make an MP of that type.
A 49-member House/Senate committee is currently working on the electoral system for the next race to parliament as part of a pair of organic laws which are yet to be made in accordance with the amended sections of the constitution pertaining to the election for MPs and political parties.
But Prayut might possibly dissolve the House only to abort the process for the organic laws and instead issue an executive decree to enforce the electoral system earlier applied in the previous election and use it again for the next one, they said.
CAPTIONS:
Top: Former premier Anand Panyarachun, right, and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha,left, inset over an image of a huge crowd of protesters. Photo: Matichon
Home Page: Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. Photo: Naewna
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