The main reason the PPP may be willing to budge and go along with the CDA idea, is that if the present constitution is amended according to the normal parliamentary process, it’s likely it wouldn’t be finished in time for PPP and coalition parties to dodge the the party dissolution cases they are facing, and which are currently pending in the Constitution Court.

Mr Chaturon explained that in setting up the CDA with full participation from the people and subjecting the draft constitution to a national referendum, the amendment process will be acceptable to the public and academics.

The Thai Rath editorial argued that Mr Chaturon’s idea was a sounder one than that advocated by PPP leader and prime minister, Samak Sundaravej who bullheadedly declared that the PPP must aggressively push for a constitutional amendment. If the outcome threatened the survival of the government’s political parties, Mr Samak would call for a new general election.

This was the first time that Mr Samak openly admitted that the PPP’s push for a constitution amendment is to escape the pending dissolution case.

Mr Samak’s plan to dissolve the House of Representatives and call for a new general election is likely to attract further criticism as it sounded like a threat to the Election Commission, the Attorney-General, the Constitution Court and other independent organisations investigating and prosecuting political parties for election law violations.

Such a plan would also unnecessarily drag people to the ballot box again, only a few months after they cast votes in the last election. Organising another general election would also waste millions of baht of taxpayers’ money.

According to legal principles, anyone who breaks the law must be punished. Buddhist teachings also mention karma, and that one must bear both the good and bad consequences of one’s own actions. It is not right to drag others into the suffering of one’s misfortunes. By dissolving parliament, people would have to come out to vote again and see their tax money used for an election instead of worthier causes.

Mr Samak’s threat to dissolve the House of Representatives if the Constitution Court dissolves PPP shows that the powers-that-be don’t accept the due legal process provided by the judicial branch, which is another pillar of a functioning democracy. It would seem that the politicians in power think that they are above the law, and assume that even if they break the law, they won’t be punished for it.

The Thai Rath editorial posed a rhetorical question that if the prime minister or a minister is sentenced to a jail term by the Criminal Court, would the government using its majority in parliament issue a law to dissolve the court to avoid the jail term?

Amending a constitution is possible and normal in a democracy, but it must be done in an appropriate time and manner. To avoid social and political division, the process must be inclusive and done with reconciliation in mind and with all sectors of society - both the government and its opposition - taking part, concluded Thai Rath.

Global food crisis

Soaring global food prices have generated riots in several countries, and there’s a good chance there will be more. The World Bank recently came out to warn that up to 33 countries had been placed on a crisis list, noted Varakorn Samkoses, a Matichon writer.

Over the past year, rice prices rose more than 100% from about $300 per tonne to $740. Soy bean prices rose from $280 per tonne to $500, wheat from $200 to $450, and maize from $170 to $220.

Rice, soy bean, wheat and maize are staple foods for human consumption throughout the world. The doubling in price of staple foods poses adverse consequences for the world’s poor, the 2.7 billion people who earn less than $2 a day. There are 6 billion people in the world’s population.

That there will be repercussions for the poor from this rapid rise in food prices is beyond dispute, while benefits of it for the world’s farmers are less certain, due to rapidly increasing production costs.

A glaring example of this is the steep rise in price of diammonium phosphate, a basic fertiliser, which has gone from $450 per tonne last year to $1,200 this year.

Other factors of agricultural production have risen in cost as well. These include labour, insecticides, chemicals and diesel for transporting farm products to markets.

What are the main reasons the price of staple foods have risen so steeply? What factors have driven up the costs of farm production?

According to the World Bank report, there are at least four explanations.

First, the rising demand for raw materials and resources in China, India and other developing countries have pushed up prices. Staple foods are a component of this demand.

Second, the increasing production of bio-fuels has reduced acreage for growing staple foods. The United States produces ethanol from maize, contributing to a shortfall in global maize supply. Brazil, the world’s largest ethanol producer, does not pose this problem because it produces ethanol from sugarcane. The US aims to raise ethanol production from 7 to 60 billion gallons in the near future, which is likely to create an even greater imbalance between the world’s supply and demand of maize.

Third, global climate change has brought long droughts in Australia and Africa and floods in Asia which has reduced grain production this year.

Fourth, several countries have intervened with market forces by restricting exports or imports of staple foods and by subsidising consumption, disrupting the market’s equilibrium. At present, Vietnam, India and Egypt restrict rice exports to stabilise local stockpile/prices.

All of these factors point to rising global demand, which has not been met by the rise in global food supplies over the past 3-4 years. This shift has resulted in price rises.

Mr Varakorn then outlined the three main causes for the steep rise in farm production costs. First, the global oil price rose steeply over the past year to $119 per barrel at present (1 barrel = 159 litres). This has made the price of natural gas rise as well. Chemicals such as fertiliser and insecticide are petro-chemical products made from crude oil and natural gas. So these factors of farm production rose in cost as well.

Second, when oil prices rose, transport costs and the costs of other raw materials rose accordingly, and have contributed to the higher cost of farm production.

Third, some raw materials such as fertilisers, chemicals and insecticides are restricted by upstream production (petro-chemical industries) which cannot get a supply to the market fast enough, resulting in price rises.

The steep rise in the crude oil price over the past year has thus been the main factor in the farm sector’s higher production costs.

Mr Varakorn noted that the global food stockpile is enough to feed global consumers, but it comes at a much higher price right now. This is the main reason for the food riots which have hit Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Mauritania and some parts of India (West Bengal).

Other countries where food riots are thought to become likely are Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana, and Philippines.

Philippines is the largest importer of rice (almost 2 million tonnes), followed by Nigeria (1.5 million), Indonesia and the EU (1.2 million each), and Saudi Arabia (1 million).

Thailand is the largest rice exporter (9 million tonnes), followed by Vietnam (4 million), US (3.8 million), India and Pakistan (about 3 million each).

Staple foods are one of the four basic life necessities. The fact that billions of the world’s poor cannot access staple foods due to high prices is most worrying because it is linked to global socio-economic stability.

Food experts predict it will take another 2-3 years before supply and demand return to equilibrium and the price of staple foods stop rising.

The question is how high the food price will be at this future equilibrium, and whether the future food price will be able to match the production costs that vary country to country.

Domestically, there are four questions that Mr Varakorn would like the government to ponder.

First, how can the government help the nation’s poor to access affordable food?

Second, how much land should be turned into farm land and how much will be allocated of precious water resources?

Third, what measures will the government adopt to deal effectively with food prices and production costs?

Fourth, how can the government employ science and technology to help raise productivity and lower production costs?

Miscellany

Media representatives have come out in force to condemn PM’s Office Minister Jakrapob Penkair for trying to get illegal community radio stations to work for the government.

At a meeting in Khon Kaen on Saturday Mr Jakrapob reportedly instructed about 500 northeastern community radio operators to broadcast government programmes for a few hours each day to avoid arrest for operating without a licence. Community radio stations are not recognised by law as there is still no regulatory body to allocate broadcast frequencies, despite this being a provision of the 1997 constitution.

In other news, Democrat party deputy leader Jurin Laksanavisit says the government’s proposal to rewrite the constitution and base it on the abrogated 1997 charter is a covert attempt to do away with Articles 237 and 309.

The amendment of the entire charter was merely a change of tactics, while the aim remained unchanged - to save the PPP from dissolution and to help former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra escape charges of corruption and abuse of authority.

The move by the coalition partners for a total rewrite was an attempt to deflate criticism after the proposal for a partial amendment was labelled self-serving. The 1997 charter, which was hailed as the people’s charter, did not contain the provisions in Articles 237 and 309 of the new charter, Mr Jurin said.

source: Bangkok Post