PUBLISHED : 9 Mar 2024 at 05:07
Former red-shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan accused the government of stalling over an amnesty for people facing legal action in politically motivated cases.
He said on Friday that the government should start implementing a new political amnesty plan rather than buying time by repeatedly ordering new studies.
Mr Jatuporn suspected the government was not serious about its promise to push for the amnesty and was now pretending to take action only to mitigate the political pressure from growing calls for one.
He was responding to a decision by the House of Representatives’ special committee tasked with studying proposals for implementing a new political amnesty to invite more parties at next week’s meeting to provide more views on the government’s new amnesty bid.
They include Nattawut Saikuar, a former co-leader of the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD); Thaworn Senneam, a former core figure in the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC); Patsaravalee “Mind” Tanakitvibulpon, a former youth protest leader; Suriyasai Katasila, a former protest leader of the yellow-shirt People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD); and the Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw) group.
These parties are being invited to a meeting with the House’s amnesty studying committee next Thursday, Pheu Thai Party deputy leader Chusak Sirinil said yesterday in his capacity as chairman of the House committee.
“The committee has already exceeded its initial 60-day time frame and now needs more time to conduct new studies over and over,” said Mr Jatuporn.
The Prayut Chan-o-cha administration conducted several such studies, the findings of which ended up being quietly shelved and were never translated into action, he said.
“If they simply keep discussing this matter in the House of Representatives and the Senate over and over, we will never see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
Mr Jatuporn also reiterated a previous call for Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin to study how former privy council president Gen Prem Tinsulanonda conducted a far larger-scale political amnesty when he was prime minister.
The House committee also concluded on Friday that the new amnesty for political offenders would apply to cases that date back to Jan 1, 2005, until the present, said Mr Chusak.
Nikorn Chamnong, secretary-general of the House committee, was assigned to gather information about all these cases and is required to report back to the committee on March 21, said Mr Chusak.
Lese majeste cases will not be included in this round of information gathering, he added.
Mr Nikorn said he has already made a request for information on more than 50,000 politically motivated cases.