When Thailand's military seized power in a bloodless coup last September, one of the casualties was the country's most progressive constitution since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.
Promulgated in 1997 and dubbed by some as the 'people's constitution', it was the outcome of years of public consultation and careful engineering designed to produce stable, decisive governments. Its framers wrote in sophisticated checks and balances on the executive, and tried to promote political party discipline to curb the horse-trading excesses of the 1990s, when the average coalition government lasted only 18 months in office.
Last year's coup plotters quickly shredded the 1997 constitution and adopted an interim charter that gave them the power to rewrite the rules of the game. The result, due to be unveiled on Thursday at a handover ceremony, is a new draft constitution that would be Thailand's 18th in 75 years. Its proponents say it is a compromise charter that can steer Thailand back to civilian rule by next year, provided elections are held in December, as Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont pledged last month.
Before then, according to the military's timetable, the draft document will be presented at public forums and fine-tuned by a constitutional assembly in July. The final version would then be put to the electorate in the form of a referendum, the first in Thai history, due in September.
The sting in the tail is that a No vote would allow the military to pick out any previous charter to promulgate, along with its own amendments.
With the draft version circulating among politicians and pundits and excerpted in Thai newspapers, the debate has already begun to heat up.