BANGKOK: Thai Premier Yingluck Shinawatra yesterday said she was taking legal advice to counter a Constitutional Court ruling that scuppered her party’s plans for a fully-elected senate.
The ruling Puea Thai party has slammed the court for its Wednesday verdict that found a bill to change the make-up of parliament’s upper house was “unconstitutional.”
“This kind of thing has never happened before, so I will ask the Council of State to study the issue,” Yingluck told reporters, referring to the government’s legal advisers. She added that she did not want to see “conflict” in the country, which has been seized by periodic bouts of sometimes bloody political turbulence since her divisive brother Thaksin was deposed in a coup seven years ago.
Puea Thai, which escaped potential dissolution by the court Wednesday, has questioned the authority of the tribunal’s nine judges to rule on charter amendments that have been decided in parliament.
Spokesman Pormpong Nopparit said the party was looking at a number of legal avenues to fight the verdict, including trying to impeach the five judges who ruled the party had violated its powers in the process of passing the bill.
afp
