The Principle of Democracy and Senate of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand 2017

Abstract

The Senate is the supreme legislative body constitutionally established in a number of liberal democracies within the scope of essential liberal democratic state regime principles. Such states all aim to ensure democratic principles are values that fall within the norms of constitutional law, especially in the case of establishing a high-level organization under the constitution. Such organizations are all subject to democratic principles. There must be an organizational origin linked to the electorate with sovereign power. The Senate, under the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560 (2017), is a high-ranking state legislative body under the Constitution that is required to have a constitutionalizing organizational structure connected to voters as well as the consistency of a high-level state organization consistent with democratic principles, as it is only indirectly elected by the sovereign power of voters through a universal electoral mechanism withholding democratic legitimacy by the principle of representative democracy in accordance with the liberal democratic state regime. After considering the compositions of other senates established by foreign constitutions, differences between other national senate composition forms and that of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand 2017 may be identified, to underline the dissociation between the supreme constitutional organization and democratic principles. This is due to a lack of Thai senatorial composition formulation which prevents the electorate from participating in a comprehensive, concrete selection process through a general electoral system.