Ombudsman to seek court ruling on party-list MP calculation

0
954
Secretary-General of the Office of the Ombudsman, Raksakecha Chaechai.
Secretary-General of the Office of the Ombudsman, Raksakecha Chaechai.

Bangkok – Following a meeting on Friday, the Secretary-General of the Office of the Ombudsman, Raksakecha Chaechai, said his agency has resolved that the laws which stipulate how the party-list seats should be distributed, namely Section 128 of the organic law governing the elections of MPs and Section 91 of the constitution, may contradict each other. Three of the eight subsections of Section 128 have clauses that go beyond Section 91 of the charter, and this may affect the calculation method for party-list MPs.

Raksakecha said the Office of the Ombudsman has no authority to deliberate on this issue and is expected to forward its resolution to the Constitutional Court by Monday at the latest.

A petition calling for the nullification of the March 24 election was also submitted by a former member of the now-dissolved Thai Raksa Chart Party, Ruangkrai Leekitwattana. The Office of the Ombudsman considered many aspects of the petition, including the Election Commission’s (EC) decision not to count the ballots from New Zealand that were delivered late.

On the EC’s handling of the poll results, the Secretary-General said the EC had posted the election results and was not withholding any information, and members of the public can check them at their respective polling units. Therefore, the Ombudsman’s Office has finalized its consideration of this complaint.