House meeting only spends 25 minutes due to usual lack of quorum

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES today (Jan.18) spent a record short period of time for a regular meeting due to the usual lack of a quorum.

Deputy House Speaker Suchart Tancharoen was obliged to adjourn today’s House meeting due to the repeated lack of a quorum after it had only proceeded for 25 minutes, lasting a record short period of time.

Only 203 MPs reportedly attended and cast votes on legislation on marijuana and cannabis whilst the House quorum called for the attendance of no less than one half of the total of the elected legislators, currently accounting for 216.

Of an original total of 500 MPs, 68 have already resigned, thus immediately losing their MP status, mostly as part of a legal procedure for the lawmakers to switch parties during a run-up to the next general election.

The House meetings have been repeatedly called off due to lack of a quorum, but Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has not shown signs to dissolve it and call a general election in 60 days.

In case that the House’s four-year term, scheduled to end in late March, is fully consumed, all electoral contestants are legally obliged to have been registered as members of a contesting party for a minimum of 90 days prior to the election date, tentatively scheduled for mid-May, with the general election to be held in 45 days after the completion of the House term.

In case that the House is dissolved by the prime minister in the meantime, all electoral contenders are legally bound to have been attached to a contesting party for a minimum of 30 days ahead of the date of the election which is to be held in 60 days.

Nevertheless, those who have already resigned apparently could not afford to guess whether Prayut, who has been looking to retain power for two more years as allowed by court, would live out the House’s four-year term or dissolve it on any day.

He is more or less speculated to dissolve the House a week or two before it may be otherwise fully consumed on March 24.

CAPTIONS:

Top: A meeting of the House of Representatives at parliament. Photo: NNT

Front Page: The representation of the 1932 constitution at the top of the Democracy Monument. Photo: NNT

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