NLA likely to vote against impeachment of politicians

The NLA will today debate before seeking a vote on whether to consider the case against former Parliament president Somsak Kiatsuranont and his then-deputy Nikom Wairatpanich.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) found the pair guilty of allegedly violating the constitution by pushing for amendments on the composition of the Senate. The agency made the recommendation for the Senate to launch impeachment proceedings before the Senate was dissolved after the May 22 coup.

“There is a probability that the assembly will vote against impeaching the two, as there is no provision that it can take recourse to in order to prosecute them,’’ the source said.

Though some lawmakers said the offences could be based on the NACC Act, there was no provision in the Act that mentioned the constitutional offences allegedly committed by Somsak and Nikom, he said.

The legal debate surrounding an impeachment move against the two politicians boiled down to whether the NLA has the courage to remove evil from the country’s politics, People’s Democratic Reform Committee co-leader Thaworn Senneam said yesterday. “The National Council for Peace and Order appointed the NLA so the agency could help eradicate evil in politics,” he said. 

“It now depends on whether the assembly is brave enough to cut off the tumour. It also depends on whether the NLA members are sincere in tackling the country’s illness or if it will just be a complacent paper tiger.”

Thaworn said as a legal specialist, he believed the two politicians must be prosecuted to prevent others from committing the same alleged offence.

NLA whip Somchai Swangkarn said there were three possibilities: 

The first possibility was for the NLA to impeach Somsak and Nikom while the second alternative was to reject the impeachment because of legal technicalities. 

He said if the latter happened, the NLA would debate on whether the constitutional charges pressed by the NACC be dropped and the impeachment proceedings stopped.

As a third possibility, the NLA could seek to exempt its regulations that stipulated the impeachment of a politician must be placed on the NLA’s agenda within 30 days of the case being filed and suspends the impeachment proceedings until the new Parliament was elected. 

Somchai added that there was no question the NLA had the authority to impeach a politician because Article 5 of the interim charter empowered it to make the final decision in any legal dispute. 

Nikom has threatened to take the NLA to court if it impeaches him, saying the alleged offence was filed under the last charter, which is now defunct.

Lawmakers have argued that although the 2007 charter is now defunct, provisions 58 and 64 of the National Anti-Corruption Act 1999 are still in effect. 

The provisions stipulate that political office-holders who are believed to be unusually rich, corrupt, abuse their authority or violate the charter or any other law must face impeachment by the Senate.

Pheu Thai Party MPs have called on the NLA to make a prudent decision on the matter, saying the assembly should refrain from creating further political conflict.