By Thai Newsroom Reporters
AS MANY AS 1,200 people including defeated senatorial candidates will likely be questioned by the Department of Special Investigation as personal witnesses to alleged senatorial rigging, bloc-voting shenanigans.
The estimated 1,200 witnesses will likely be individually summoned for interrogation by the DSI pertaining to allegations that as many as 138 out of a total 200 senators had been directly involved in last year’s senatorial rigging, bloc-voting plots orchestrated by unnamed persons clandestinely associated with the Bhumjaithai, the second largest coalition partner under de facto party boss Newin Chidchob.
Those witnesses include a number of defeated contestants with some currently being put in reserve following last year’s complicated, triple-tiered elections for senior lawmakers. Many had been allegedly hired by the politically-connected elements to vote for certain fellow contestants at district, provincial and national levels of the unprecedented races.
Meanwhile, a group of senatorial candidates being put in reserve and others today (March 3) called on House Speaker/Parliament President Wan Muhammad Noor Matha to endorse the planned investigation into the senatorial rigging scandals by the DSI which may address them on a special-case basis.
They maintained that the bloc-voting shenanigans had been illegally, yet successfully carried out to land the 138 winning contestants the senatorialship.
Scripts of electoral numbers for certain senatorial candidates to pick at the national level of the senatorial races had been literally prepared and handed out by the politically-associated elements for those allegedly hired as perpetrators of the bloc-voting plots.
Election Commission Secretary-General Sawaeng Boonmee had earlier commented that the specified electoral numbers evidently seen on the back of the ballot papers were by no means deemed illegal.
The defeated candidates charged that the polling agency, especially its secretary-general, had not done anything about the rigging shenanigans after the complicated elections have elapsed for the last eight months.
Nevertheless, a number of senators, mostly among the 138 suspected to have been involved in the electoral fraud, had threatened to take legal action against Justice Minister Thavi Sodsong and DSI Director-General Yutthana Praedum on charges of breaching the code of ethics by launching investigation into the senatorial rigging scandals.
Whilst most of the 138 suspected senators are largely known as more or less oriented in support of the Bhumjaithai, the Prachachart leader-cum-justice minister is viewed as personally loyal to Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s father/de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra.
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Top and Front Page: The Department of Special Investigation logo overlaid on Parliament meeting chamber. Photo: Thai Rath
Insert: Justice Minister Thavi Sodsong. Photo: Thai Rath
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