The Constitution Court has been accused of acting outside its jurisdiction when it ordered parliament to suspend vetting of the charter amendment bill.
The Pheu Thai Party and legal experts yesterday were gearing up for impeachment proceedings against the court's judges whom they claim violated the constitution as they had no right to take up protest petitions without a final opinion by the Office of the Attorney General.
The court on Friday voted 7 to 1 to accept complaints from the opposition Democrat Party and four individuals regarding the constitutionality of the draft charter amendment.
It also ordered parliament to suspend its deliberation of the bill pending a review.
The petitions asked the court to rule if the bill, which could lead to politicians steering charter rewrites by influencing the election of drafters, amounts to an act to abolish the constitutional monarchy.
Legal expert and former senator Panas Tassaneeyanond agreed the court's order was unconstitutional.
"The action can be deemed a violation of the charter as it is meddling in administrative power. I call on the public to sign a petition to impeach the judges under Section 270 of the constitution," Mr Panas wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.
Thailand’s lawmakers have passed proposals to amend the constitution. But the changes are still a long way from being inked, as the Constitutional Court will now consider the proposals in a process that could not only endanger the amendment process, but also the ruling government coalition, explains Saksith Saiyasombut.
As if this Wednesday – that already spilled into Thursday morning – wasn’t going long enough, the senators and the MPs were still talking at almost 2am in the assembly hall. Shortly before that, the majority of the 505 lawmakers passed proposals to amend certain articles of the military-installed 2007 constitution. That marked the end of a three-day marathon, with sessions often going over 12 hours and a lot of arguments and a lot of barbs being exchanged.
What Articles of the Constitution Are Being Amended?
Article 68
concerns how a petition can be filed to Constitutional Court, in case “
a person or political party
” tries to “
to overthrow the democratic regime of government with the King as Head of State under this Constitution
“. The current wording states that anybody has “
the right to request the Prosecutor General to investigate its facts
and
submit a motion to the Constitutional Court,
” making it ambivalent whether or not the attorney general is required to submit petitions or if he can be ignored. The amendments see that ambiguity is clarified.
Articles 111-112, 115-118 and 120
deal with the Senate and, according to the proposals, that every senator should be elected again. Currently, 76 are elected, while the other 74 are appointed ones made up by (in theory) experts from various sectors such as the academic, the public and the private sector.
Article 190
requires that all treaties and contracts signed with another country needs to be approved by the parliament. The amendments want this to be softened.
Article 237
is the constitutional base for a dissolution of a whole political party. It’s already enough when “
a candidate (…) who commits an act (…) in violation of the organic law on election (and) the President or an executive board of director of a political party (…) fails to deter or revise such commission. (…) In such case, if the Constitutional Court orders to dissolve such political party, (…) the President or the executive board of directors of a political party shall be suspended for the period of five years as from the date such order is made.
” The new version is supposed to make it harder to dissolve a party.
However, on Wednesday afternoon – while the session was still going on – the Constitutional Court accepted a petition by 40 (mostly appointed) senators calling for a halt to the amendment process:
Thailand
’s Constitutional Court has agreed to examine whether an attempt to amend an article in the country’s constitution is legal.
The judges, however, refused to issue an injunction suspending parliamentary debate on the proposed change (…)
Opposition Sen. Somchai Sawaengkarn also asked the court to dissolve the ruling party and other parties that support the amendment process.
“
“, Associated Press, April 4, 2013
The panel of 9 judges voted 3 to 2 to accept the petition, while the other 4 are reportedly gone on an overseas trip.
It is rather ironic that this case touches on nearly all Articles that are planned to be amended (see above): A group of 40 mostly appointed senators (Articles 111-112) called directly on the Constitutional Court without the attorney-general (Article 68) to halt the current deliberations on the constitutional amendments, arguing that the amendments of these Articles 68 and 237 is unconstitutional. And on top of that, the senators urge the Court to ban every lawmaker in favor of the charter changes and dissolve their political parties (Article 237).
Här är lite i ämnet, det finns som sagt hur mycket till som helst ifrån alla engelskspråkiga medier som skriver om Thailand och dess politik, jag gjorde ett undantag denna gång men nästa sökande får du allt klara själv, jag är förvånad över hur du kan "missa" sånt här som politiskt intreserad.
Med vänlig hälsning Isan Lover