Chiang Mai Maha Nakhon

Alerted by Khun Wisarut in the 2bangkok forum, I became aware of a draft law which would convert Chiang Mai province into a special administrative area similar to Bangkok. I have found the full text and a summary of the main points at the iLaw website. I am trying to summarize these even further to the main points from my perspective.

• Section 6: Chiang Mai Maha Nakhon (เชียงใหม่มหานคร) is a local administrative unit.
  
• Section 8: The districts (Amphoe) are to be converted into urban districts (Khet), the subdistricts (Tambon) into urban subdistricts (Khwaeng).
  
• Sections 10,11,28: The citizen elect a city council, with the councilors elected in constituencies, each having about 100,000 citizen. Council works as legislating body as well as to check performance of governor.
  
• Section 43: The citizen elect a governor.
  
• Section 70: Each of the district has an elected district council with at least seven councilors.
  
• Section 113, 127: The PAO and the municipalities are dissolved
  
• Village and subdistrict headmen and subdistrict doctors stay in office, but report to the district officer or governor instead to the central government.
  

As iLaw is a non-government site where everybody can suggest new legislation, it is far from sure that this draft law will get adopted into the official legislative procedure, especially as there were other planned special administrative areas in discussion by the past government. It depends a lot on what policies the new government has in mind for the decentralization.