38 senators spared impeachment by NLA
THIRTY-EIGHT former senators yesterday escaped being impeached for allegedly abusing their power when they supported the 1997 charter amendment bill on the composition of the Senate.
The National Legislative Assembly (NLA) yesterday voted not to impeach four groups of former senators:
The first group consisted of two ex-senators who voted in support of the amendment bill in the third reading.
The second group, who supported the bill in the first, second and third readings, consisted of 22 former senators.
The third group, which voted in the first and third readings, consisted of 13 ex-Senators while one ex-senator voted in the second reading.
Three-fifths, or at least 132 of the 220 NLA member, had to support to impeach for that to happen.
Unlike previous vote calls, NLA vice president Surachai Liengboonlertchai asked members of the media to leave the chamber and suspended the media broadcast of the proceedings until voting was completed.
The assembly took almost four hours before the vote results were revealed.
The first group survived the impeachment 166 votes to 35 with seven abstentions.
For the second group, it was 164 votes to 35 with nine abstentions.
The vote for the third group varied from 149-152 for and 44-50 against with nine abstentions while for the fourth group it was 139 to 66 with three abstentions.
