Democrats won't apologise over what happened in Parliament
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Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva on Thursday refused to apologise House Speaker Somsak Kiartsuranon and vowed instead to seek his impeachment.
Abhisit alleges that Somsak sided with the government and abused this authority as the chairman of the meeting in Wednesday’s House session to gag Democrat MPs from pointing the serious flaws in the reconciliation bills.
Turmoil broke out when Somsak tried to ask the House to vote whether to move up the four reconciliation bills to top the House agenda so that the bills could be deliberated Thursday.
Democrat MPs pointed out that the bills needed to be first endorsed by the prime minister before they could submitted to the House because they would require the government to return Bt46 billion to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as part of the proposed reconciliation.
After Somsak insisted on calling for a House vote on whether the four bills should be deliberated Thursday, the Democrats booed and shouted that Somsak was biased in favour of the government.
Some Democrat MPs tried to pull Somsak out of his seat as meeting chairman. Eventually, Parliament police had to come in to protect Somsak from being surrounded by the Democrats.
Abhisit said the Democrats would not apologise over what happened but the government would have to take responsibility for trying to push the reconciliation bills through the House.
Abhisit admitted that the Democrat’s image was affected by what happened on Wednesday but added that the Democrat MPs needed to stop a law that would severely damage the country.
“Nobody would like to see what happened. Our party’s image was affected to certain level but I think we can accept it if we can stop the law that would damage the country,” Abhisit said.
He said Democrat MPs were seeking to impeach Somsak for failing to perform his duty without partisanship.
