By Thai Newsroom Reporters
PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE Minister Pichit Chuenban today (May 20) categorically dismissed hearsay he has just called it quits in the face of an impeachment bid recently lodged against Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and himself.
The Pheu Thai-attached Pichit told reporters at Government House he is not going to resign as rumours may have it in an otherwise effort to prompt some among a group of 40 senators who had earlier undersigned the impeachment petition to the Constitutional Court against the Pheu Thai-attached prime minister and himself to withdraw themselves very shortly. Such an impeachment bid for the Constitutional Court to take into consideration legally warrants a minimum of one-tenth of the total of senators, accounting for 25, to endorse it.
The Constitutional Court is expected to decide on the upcoming Thursday whether to proceed with the senators’ petition or to waive it.
The senior lawmakers have alleged Srettha and Pichit had perpetrated a severe breach to the Constitution and Code of Political Ethics with the former having named the latter for minister during Apr. 30’s cabinet lineup and the latter having been given a jail sentence for contempt of court in an attempted payoff lawsuit in 2008.
The prime minister, quietly pushed to power by deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict on parole Thaksin Shinawatra, has earlier maintained that the naming of Pichit as minister attached to the Prime Minister’s Office was by no means illegitimate as accused by government critics and that he had earlier consulted the Council of State over relevant legal matters.
Nevertheless, if the Constitutional Court accepts the senators’ petition, both the prime minister and the Prime Minister’s Office minister will be immediately suspended from performing their official duties, pending a court ruling in relation to the accusations filed against them.
As a former lawyer acting on behalf of both Thaksin and Yingluck, the newly-named Prime Minister’s Office minister had been ruled by court as guilty of attempting to hand two million baht in cash literally contained in food bags to administrative officials of the Supreme Court and thus sentenced to six months in jail.
However, Pichit contended that his jail term had been served and its litigation period had long expired and that it had been literally given at an order of the court and not by a verdict of the court.
According to the former lawyer, court verdicts may prohibit convicts from assuming political positions in future whilst court orders do not dictate so.
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Top and Front Page: Prime Minister’s Office Minister Pichit Chuenban. Both photos: Thai Rath
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