Other than that, no one can deny that despite the presence of 60 active and retired military officers, there is a greater concentration of highly qualified people in the NLA than in the average democratically elected parliament. In other words, one can expect this stop-gap legislature to deliver better quality work overall simply because its non-military members, who represent a variety of professional groups, tend to possess demonstrable expertise and the ability to engage in rational debate. The same could not be said of the great majority of MPs and senators in previous parliaments.

But one thing is clear: to do their job well, the newly appointed assemblymen must take it upon themselves to perform their duties without fear or favour. They must remind themselves that they are there to serve the people and the country - not their political masters or those who handpicked them - and certainly not to further selfish interests. The NLA members are supposed to have a good working relationship with the interim government of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, but should aim a lot higher than serving merely as a rubber stamp to pass legislation initiated by the government.

Indeed, the NLA must operate with a high degree of independence. The legislative assembly is supposed to engage the interim government as an equal partner and - in the absence of democratically elected parliament - provide checks and balances against the administrative branch of government alongside the independent judiciary. Members of the NLA have the power to revise legislation in consultation with the Surayud government, or even vote to reject it if they have to.

Even a government that came to power through a military coup must subject itself to democratic principles, sound governance and transparency in decision-making. The more so if the interim government and the Council for National Security want to be seen as practising what they preach and making good on their promise to rid politics of corruption and restore full democracy within 12 months.

It must also be said that the NLA has the mandate to serve all people, all interest groups, including those not represented in the national assembly itself. Conspicuously underrepresented in the NLA are people that can really speak for the rural masses, which make up the majority of people in this country. Certainly, it is not enough to appoint NGO do-gooders or intellectuals who claim to understand and know how to deal with the problems of poverty-stricken farmers.

In a way, the gross under-representation of the rural masses or the agricultural sector reflects the distrust of these underprivileged groups, who have been and might continue to be supporters of the deposed Thaksin government. This is too bad given the fact that the Surayud government and the NLA are supposed to be working together to try to wean the rural people off the kind of manipulative populist policies that corruption-prone Thaksin Shinawatra used to buy their loyalty.

On the other hand, journalists and media figures appear to be over-represented in the NLA. Of course, it could be argued that the media as a group deserves a say in the rebuilding of democracy because media freedom is considered one of its major pillars. But do we really need this many representatives in the legislative assembly, especially when some of the seats allocated to journalists could have been given to representatives of farmers?

The NLA has not got off to a good start. All the more reason for individual members to make the extra effort to make it work the way it was intended.