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[Hedda]

Portions of the Thai power elite sitting on the junta's hand-picked Election Commission continue to vent their pique against those awful Europeans, who had the gall to ask if they could monitor the supervision of the upcoming elections for Parliament.

The latest attempt to delay and perhaps derail EU monitors for the election was raised by the EC secretary-general who said that the new Thai Constitution required any memorandum of understanding (MoU) on election observation with the European Union to be submitted to the junta's appointed NLA for approval. According to the EC, that's because Article 190 of the new 2007 constitution requires agreements having a bearing on sovereignty to be debated and approved by parliament.

I may be wrong, because I have yet to see an English langauge version of the Constitution that was approved in last month's referendum, but I would be surprised if the new Constitution includes any reference to the junta's hand-picked NLA as Thailand's de jure "Parliament." That body, which was created by General Sonthi's "Interim Constitution" and appointed, not elected, would seem to have no role to play under the new Constitution.

Even assuming that the untra-sensitive Thais are correct in claiming that EU election monitors somehow involve an intrusion on Thai sovereignty, it's difficult to see how the NLA's junta-apppointed members can constitute themselves a "Parliament" under the new Constitution that's required to approve the presence of EU monitors. More likely, this is just another attempt by some thin-skinned Thais to stall and eventual kill the EU's proposal by dropping it into some black hole in the NLA.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/09Sep2007_news00.php