EC members to decide Wednesday whether to protest any points in NLA-passed bill
Election commissioners will meet on Wednesday to examine the details of the new Election Commission (EC) bill that was passed by the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) last week, in order to see whether there are any legal points that need to be protested, Boonsong Noisophon, the EC member responsible for electoral investigation, said on Monday.
The NLA passed the EC bill – one of four organic laws required for the coming general election – in its second and third readings on Friday, with the passed version requiring a total “resetting” of the EC’s membership, among other critical changes.
Boonsong said he believed the passage of the bill would violate the spirit of the Constitution in that although some EC members, including himself, already had qualifications meeting the requirements addressed in the new charter, they would have to vacate their seats following the NLA’s approval of changes to the bill following deliberation by its law-vetting committee.
He also claimed that four key points proposed by the EC had also been removed from the bill, and that this could affect the commission’s efficiency and violate the spirit of the charter, as well.
These include the authority to suspend an election if fraud is found, and the determination of a new election date by the EC.
Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam, meanwhile, rejected the notion that the NLA’s passage of the bill was intended to replace the present EC members with the junta’s “people”, saying that there was a still a long way to go before the selection process took place.
Wissanu insisted that changes in the bill were about the required restructuring of the EC, and not just the qualifications of certain EC members, as was being widely discussed.
