The best thing that can be said about last week's action by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) is that the all-male group understands it has created a problem. It has returned to the public a tiny bit of the civil and human rights it removed 52 months ago. On Friday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha used his extraordinary powers under Section 44 to give some small but important freedoms to political parties. While the order restores the right to organise party affairs, it falls lamentably short of restoring basic and constitutional rights to all Thais.
The main parties gave a cautious welcome to Gen Prayut's order. It legalised, for the first time since the coup of May 22, 2014, action by parties to -- in the words of the order printed in the Royal Gazette -- "conduct important activities ahead of the election", which still has no date. Those activities are vital. They include organising party membership and chapters, and preparing for the country's first primary elections. In addition, the Election Commission itself is now legally entitled to redraw national constituency lines to account for new, smaller House of Representatives to be eventually elected.
Even this is parsimonious. According to Gen Prayut's order in the name of his NCPO, party leaders and executives cannot legally provide members or the public with even their most basic platform and policies. Parties are allowed to recruit members, under the new freedom, and even can give discounts of up to 50% of the required 100-baht membership fee. That raises the obvious question of why people would join a political party without knowing its policies and election platform.
