Chart Thai Pattana distancing from charter change
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The Chart Thai Pattana Party has submitted a written statement to the Constitution Court clarifying that the coalition party has no involvement in the charter amendment bill.
What happened was MPs made their respective individual decisions to co-sponsor the bill, party leader Chumpol Silapa-archa said in the statement.
Chumpol said his party had never convened an executive board meeting to debate and endorse the bill.
“Under Article 122 of the Constitution, MPs are free to exercise their discretion in sponsor a legislation in conjunction with other parties,” he said, arguing his party did not have the sufficient votes to sponsor the bill under its name.
In defending his party’s vote in support of charter change, he argued that his party had always upheld the Constitution and that the charter rewrite by the Constitution Drafting Assembly was in accordance with the precedent from the suspended 1997 charter.
He said his party found the draft provisions to form the CDA to be in conformity with Article 68 because the proposed amendments did not aim to topple the democratic rule or to cling to power by unconstitutional means.
