Review qualifications of winning Senate candidates first: Somchai
Outgoing senator urges Election Commission to see if the winning candidates are actually qualified before endorsing them
Caretaker Senator Somchai Swangkarn urged the Election Commission (EC) to closely review the qualifications of the senatorial election winners before endorsing them, saying many may be unqualified.
However, he was quick to add that he was not trying to rock the boat so he and the 249 junta-appointed senators could stay on indefinitely.
He said he simply wanted to see representatives of 20 professional groups elected to the upper chamber without falling under the control of political parties.
Somchai alleged that several candidates who had passed the district and provincial levels of the poll and are contesting at the national level, hold shares in media companies and are active state officials.
These people, he said, should have been stopped from contesting from the very beginning.
He added that the EC should not endorse winners first and then seek court orders to remove them later. He cited a similar situation during the general election last year, saying that the EC endorsed MPs in 71 constituencies despite complaints of them cheating. He said the EC did not even bother to seek their removal later.
Somchai added that the senatorial election should have been annulled even before the district-level voting was held because many candidates had been hired to cast votes for specific people. He claimed that some candidates were given up to 1 million baht to cast votes for certain candidates.
He said he has submitted 300 pages of evidence to the EC to investigate voting in Buri Ram, Trang, Amnat Charoen and Si Sa Ket.
He also advised the EC to interrogate candidates who did not win a single vote at the national level and make them witnesses in a probe into alleged collusion.
