Secret NLA vote today on ex-senators' impeachment

NACC member Vichai Vivitsevi said the ex-senators had abused their power by amending the charter to change the composition of the Senate.

The NACC also found the charter amendment bill that the 38 politicians voted for was not the same one they had signed and presented to former Nonthaburi Senator Udomdej Rattanasathien, who proposed the charter amendment bill.

He said the bill they voted for had an additional provision, Article 6,that allowed former senators to run for the next term without having to take a political break.

Vichai said a Parliament official testified to the NACC that an assistant to Udomdej had switched the two bills on March 27, 2013, which resulted in the amendment process becoming unlawful. Udomdej had no right to amend his own draft, and only parliamentarians could do it.

The Constitutional Court also ruled that the amendment was unconstitutional because there was a cover-up over the submission of a new draft.

He dismissed the 38 ex-senators’ argument that the legislative procedures allowed them to make the switch.

“Democracy is like a coin that has two sides. One side has a majority and the other side is a minority. We have to help protect the minority from being bullied by the majority. The root cause of the political problems that led to the military coup was because the majority did not heed the voice of the minority, because there were attempts to issue a blanket amnesty, corruption in the rice-pledging scheme. The impeachment decision will prevent the majority from becoming intoxicated with power,’’ he said.

A former senator from Kamphaeng Phet, Krit Athitkaew, denied that they had abused power and violated the 1997 charter. He insisted that two NACC members were not qualified to make a decision to impeach them. They dismissed the NACC’s arguments that the problems over their directors were administrative procedures.

Ex-senator from Nakhon Panom, Withaya I-nala, denied there was another charter draft submitted in place of the original one, saying that the endorsement of the signatures of ex-senators were once not twice.

NLA president Pornpetch Wichitcholchai said the assembly would cast a secret vote today on whether to impeach the ex-senators.