PINS featuring caricatures of Thaksin will go on sale as part of a campaign to oust him.

Former national graft-buster Klanarong Chantik has been chosen to lead the team of lawyers who would question Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in court, if the Constitution Court accepts the petition.

“The Court has no right to reject our petition,” Senator Panas Tassaneeyanond said. He claimed that Article 96 of the Constitution required the court to review the petition and make a ruling after it accepted the appeal from the Senate speaker.

“The court cannot refer to its rules on the prosecution process, which is under the highest law of the land,” Panas said.

If the Constitution Court rejects a review of the petition, its ruling would not be legally proper, he said.

The top court took delivery of the petition on Tuesday. A group of 28 senators is seeking to impeach Thaksin, charging that he had an illegal conflict of interest because he still had influence over Shin Corp while making national policy. A public furore has raged over the controversial sale of a 49-per-cent stake in Shin by the PM’s family to Singapore’s Temasek Hold-ings last month.

The 28 senators who lodged the impeachment bid said the premier had violated Article 209 of the Constitution and was no longer qualified to hold public office. The article stipulates that a minister must not have influence over the management of any companies.

The move put a spotlight back on the Constitution Court, which ruled in mid-2001 to acquit Thaksin of an assets-concealment charge. The prime minister escaped a five-year ban from politics by an 8-7 vote.

Democrat MP Korn Chati-kavanij said there was ample ground for the Constitution Court to accept the senators’ petition to have Thaksin impeached. He said that in July 2001, Thaksin sent a confidential letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission in-forming the regulatory body that he had transferred Ample Rich Investment Ltd to his son Pan-thongtae Shinawatra. Thaksin had set up Ample Rich in the British Virgin Islands and transferred 32.92 million shares of Shin Corp to it.

In October 2001, Thaksin and his wife Khunying Pojaman told the SEC that Shin Corp shares held by their household maids and drivers were actually theirs, retracting an earlier statement in September 2000.

“But there has never been any mention of Ample Rich. This is very strange. So the question is whether Thaksin really transferred Ample Rich to Panthongtae or not?” Korn said.

This is a good enough reason for the top court to consider the case, he said, because Thaksin never officially reported the transfer of his holding in Ample Rich to the SEC.

If Panthongtae were to control Ample Rich, he would violate the SEC law covering a tender offer because his combined holding of the Shin Corp stocks would exceed 25 per cent of the share capital. Panthongtae never filed a tender offer for Shin Corp.

“On the other hand, Thaksin did not notify the SEC about the status of Ample Rich because he might still be controlling the company. And when he reported his assets to the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC), he did not report this asset transfer either,” Korn said.

The group of 28 senators further claimed that Thaksin continued to have a crucial say in managing Shin Corp after taking office.

They said the total value of Thaksin family’s Shin shares when he became premier in early 2001 was about Bt15 billion. But after five years in the office, Thaksin exploited government policies that favoured the telecom conglomerate, producing a huge jump in the value of the family’s holdings – to nearly five times that amount. Temasek bought the Shinawatra and Damapong families’ 49-per-cent stake in Shin for Bt73.3 billion.

The allegations involve a reduction in the concession fee for iTV; exemption of Bt16-billion in tax for Thai AirAsia; and granting concessions for national satellite orbits to Shin Satellite.

The senators picked Klanarong, the former secretary-general of the NCCC, to head its legal team, if the court agrees to review the petition. He and nine former NCCC members accused Thaksin of hiding assets in 2001.

Klanarong also played the role of NCCC prosecutor five years ago, presenting piles of written evidence and making a string of stinging verbal attacks. But Thaksin escaped impeachment after eight Constitution Court judges ruled him innocent.

The senators plan to ask the Constitution Court for judges who voted in favour of Thaksin in 2001 to step down from hearing the case.

Panas said those judges admitted clearing Thaksin because of political pressure at the time. But they should have strictly adhered to the law, he said.