Thai Parliament Cut Short Debate On Six Deep South Motions With Both Deputy Speakers Absent

BANGKOK — The second deputy speaker of Thailand's House of Representatives said on Saturday that his absence from a truncated debate on unrest in the southern border provinces had been scheduled a month in advance, rejecting suggestions of political manoeuvring.

Lertsak Phattanachaikul was responding to criticism of the Sept. 3 sitting, which Speaker Sophon Zaram closed at around 8 p.m. while the House was still debating urgent motions on the deep south. Sophon said he could not continue presiding alone, having chaired for roughly three hours, with both of his deputies on leave.

Lertsak said he and first deputy speaker Mallika Jirapanwanich had been due to attend funeral prayer rites for Princess Bajrakitiyabha at the Phiman Rattaya Throne Hall in the Grand Palace, a commitment entered in their diaries the previous month.

The three presiding officers had divided the day into three-hour shifts, he said, with Sophon scheduled to chair from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Neither deputy knew the southern motions would be moved up the order paper to sit alongside the Election Commission report on the same day. Had they known the sitting would run long, Lertsak said, they would have arranged to return.

How the sitting unravelled

The Sept. 3 debate collapsed in procedural conflict rather than substance.

Opposition members called for a quorum count while the southern motions were under discussion. Rangsiman Rome warned that failing to conclude that night would drag the matter out and eat into the following week's scheduled debate on the Election Commission report.

Government-side members objected. Suphachai Jaisamut defended the speaker, accusing the opposition of showing no consideration and saying they would leave Sophon to collapse in the chair. Members complained they had not eaten and had to leave the chamber to take medication, and a proposal was made to conduct any quorum count by roll call. Amid the resulting uproar, Sophon cut off proceedings and closed the sitting.

Opposition whip Pakornwut Udompipatskul said the whips on both sides had agreed the House would deal with two reports and the urgent motion in the same sitting, and that he had asked Sophon to sit beyond 7 p.m., which the speaker had undertaken to do.

The dispute underneath

The procedural fight rested on a disagreement about what the House should have been debating at all.

Government parties had moved the urgent southern motions ahead of the Election Commission report. Opposition MP Rakchanok Srinork accused them of doing so to shield the commission from scrutiny in the chamber, and said ministers had not travelled to the southern border provinces because they feared for their own safety. Government MPs demanded she withdraw the remark. Lertsak, presiding at the time, ruled that she should. She repeated and expanded it, and the sitting was suspended while the voting system was reset before a vote could be held.

Six motions were before the House, tabled by members from parties including Bhumjaithai, Prachachat, Kla Tham, Pheu Thai and the Democrats. None was resolved.

What the motions were about

The subject that went undebated is the long-running violence in Thailand's southern border provinces — Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala — where a separatist insurgency has persisted for decades under a state of emergency.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who also holds the interior portfolio, has said the response should improve precisely because the two offices are now held by the same person, arguing that agencies must work together concretely and that local people should be brought in to help with communication. He has described the problem as one that has run for 30 to 40 years.

Former prime minister and Democrat figure Abhisit Vejjajiva took a sharper line, saying Anutin lacked the political will to address the south and that this had allowed the violence to flare. Abhisit said he supported negotiations conducted within the framework of the constitution.

Those are contested political positions rather than findings, and the House sitting that might have tested them ended before it reached a conclusion.

What to watch

Whether the southern motions return to the order paper, and when. Six motions from five or more parties represent an unusual degree of cross-party appetite for a formal House study of the deep south. Whether they are rescheduled promptly or quietly displaced will indicate how seriously the chamber intends to treat them.

Whether the Election Commission report is debated as planned. Rome's stated concern was that the southern debate running long would push the commission's report out. If that report slips, the opposition's original accusation about sequencing becomes considerably harder for the government to dismiss.

Whether the presiding arrangements change. The immediate cause of the closure was that all three presiding officers were unavailable to chair a sitting that overran. That is an administrative problem with a straightforward fix, and whether the House adopts one will show whether it regards Sept. 3 as an accident or a convenience.