By Thai Newsroom Reporters
ABOUT 60 SENATORS could probably be denied their electoral suffrage in retroactive fashion for alleged involvement in last year’s senatorial races flagrantly riddled with electoral rigging, bloc-voting shenanigans, sources said today (May 7).
Out of a total of 200 senators, an estimated 60 could probably be handed a red card by the Election Commission in foreseeable future, rendering their right to be voted in the senatorial elections retroactively revoked and heralding by-elections to find their replacements, following last year’s senatorial elections allegedly prevailed by the preplanned vote-buying, vote-rigging, bloc-voting scams.
As many as 138 senators, mostly allegedly submissive and stalwart to the Bhumjaithai, the second largest coalition partner under de facto party boss Newin Chidchob, had been earlier suspected by the Department of Special Investigation of involvement in such electoral fraud preplanned and orchestrated by unnamed persons allegedly associated with Newin’s camp from district and provincial levels to national level.
An ad hoc seven-person committee consisting of officials of the polling agency and DSI assigned to investigate the historic scandals over the complicated senatorial elections have interrogated personal witnesses and compiled material witnesses and other pieces of evidence and will submit truthful findings to the election commissioners who are yet to consider the multiple electoral rigging cases and retroactive penalties for the suspected, senior lawmakers and others due to the electoral rigging, bloc-voting and vote-buying charges.
Given formal endorsement from the commissioners, those charges will be forwarded to the Supreme Court judges in charge of criminal lawsuits for persons in political lawsuits for a final verdict and subsequent delivery of legal penalties to the extent that the suspected senators be retroactively denied their suffrage to be voted in last year’s senatorial races, thus depriving them of their current status as senators.
An estimated 500 million baht in cash had been suspected by the investigating panel to be offered and received in a successful effort, albeit deemed unarguably illegal, to buy votes from among thousands of candidates running for senators at all levels.
Meanwhile, the DSI, a government agency under care of the Ministry of Justice, is largely anticipated to file money-laundering and criminal conspiracy charges against many of the pro-Bhumjaithai senators, likely including the estimated 60 being charged by the polling agency in separate cases for their alleged involvement in the electoral rigging rackets, the sources said.
Given the green light from Justice Minister Thavi Sodsong, who concurrently acts as leader of the Prachachart and is viewed as personally staunch to Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s father/de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, the DSI formally turned the issue which had drawn enormous public attention into a special lawsuit.
However, some outspoken senators had categorically dismissed any alleged involvement in electoral rigging scams as earlier charged by the DSI and took legal action against the agency whilst the Bhumjaithai rank and file had bluntly denied it.
Unlike an election for MPs which features constituents in all parts of the country casting votes for both party-listed candidates and individual, partisan contenders, the senatorial races unprecedentedly saw tens of thousands of contestants casting multiple votes for fellow candidates and themselves in the triple-tiered election ranging from the district and provincial levels to the national level which was held in Muang Thong Thani area on the northern outskirts of Bangkok.
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Parliament building, above, and parliament meeting chamber, Front Page. Both photos: Thai Rath
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