The attempt to adopt a mixed-member proportional election system ...

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Still, it was obvious that the competing camps in the CDC did not have “the same understanding.”
Unexpectedly, however, this did not only concern the two main models
of election systems—MMM and MMP—but also the question of what actually had
been decided when they voted on the election system in their 26th meeting on April
10 in Bang Saen. This vote was of particular importance, because it determined the
content of the draft constitution, and therefore the stipulations about which the views
would be sought in the subsequent period of public hearings. That there was indeed a
problem became apparent—and resulted in a debate of confused CDC members—
only in their 35th meeting more than six weeks later, when the CDC returned to its
debate of the election system after the public hearing phase of the draft constitution
had been concluded.
Thus, the question arises how the options that the CDC members had to vote on
at their retreat in Bang Saen were framed. In turn, these options involved concepts
that denoted their key characteristics. In meeting No. 26 of April 10, 2007, Nakharin
Mektrairat (a proponent of MMM), recalled the CDC’s informal retreat in Cha-am
(March 5-10) saying that it had been clear at that time that his group “did not want the
Party list [English in the original] system. We wanted the proportional system” (CDC
26:10). In Nakharin’s view, the word “party list” denoted the national-level lists with
a five-percent threshold that were introduced by the 1997 constitution, and used in the
elections of 2001 and 2005. His use of “proportional system,” on the other hand, denoted
a number of regional party lists without any threshold. Just before the sentence
quoted above, Nakharin had said, “I was in the minority that wanted to keep the proportional
system in the election.” What he meant was that his group had rejected the
initial idea of sub-committee two to have an election system with only 400 constituency
MPs, that is, without any party-list or proportional component. Rather, Nakharin’s
group wanted to keep the proportional element of the previous segmented MMM
election system, in parallel with the constituency MP component, but in revised form.
Looking at the German-style mixed-member proportional system as proposed by
Krirkkiat, Nakharin pointed out,
Thais have not been used to this. If we really use this system, it would be
too complicated. … The mixed system means that we should have a number
of constituency MPs, and a number of proportional MPs. (CDC 26:11)