Democrat Secretary-General Suthep Thaugsuban pays homage yesterday to the revered Mother Earth Statue, the party’s symbol. He vowed to fight to prove his innocence in court.

The Office of the Attorney-General (OAG) is expected to complete its writs seeking the dissolution of five political parties by Monday and may forward them to the Constitution Court on the same day.

It remains unclear whether the high court will combine the five cases or conduct separate reviews.

Although the panel of 11 prosecutors reached a unanimous decision on Tuesday to prosecute the five parties, the charges against the Democrat Party may be revised in the prosecution report, OAG spokesman Attapol Yaisawang said.

"One of the six original charges against the Democrats will definitely not be lodged with the high court. This is about the wrongful citing of Article 7 of the Constitution," Attapol said.

In the Election Commission-endorsed report, the Democrats allegedly called for a royally appointed prime minister to replace Thaksin Shinawatra, citing the Article as justification.

Other charges involved boycotting the April 2 election, conspiring with the People's Alliance for Democracy to overthrow an elected government and wrongfully encouraging voters to cast "no votes".

The remaining charges comprised instigating Songkhla residents to obstruct candidacy registration for the April 23 repeat vote and paying the Progressive Democratic Party to file fraud charges against the Thai Rak Thai Party.

Attapol said draft prosecution writs would be ready for a final scrutiny by Attorney-General Pachara Yutithamdamrong tomorrow.

The writ against the ruling party will be based on the Nam Yimyaem report outlining charges relating to the bankrolling of small parties to contest the poll, he said.

The three small parties, Progressive Democratic, Pattana Chat Thai and Thai Ground, will face charges relating to the falsification of membership records for electoral candidates, he said.

Constitution Court acting president Parn Jantaraparn said his court would review the prosecution reports against the five parties according to established procedures.

Parn said he could not yet specify a timeframe for the completion of the judicial review.

"All I can say now is the court will rule in 10 days whether to launch the judicial review after receiving the prosecution reports," he said.

Should the court decide to hold a hearing, the next step is for those involved to submit prosecution and defence arguments within 15 days, Parn said.

After reviewing the arguments, the court will then decide whether to conduct a closed-door or open hearing, he said.

Parn said his court would rule with impartiality, dismissing speculation about the government's influence over the judicial review.

Chaikasem Nitisiri, deputy attorney general, responded to the Democrat Party's observation that the OAG seemed to have finalised its charges against the party in a hurry, saying that the OAG worked on the case at its normal speed and without intervention.

Chaikasem, who chaired the public prosecutors' panel charged with examining the investigation files against the five parties, insisted that the panel checked all the files with prudence.

"We carefully checked the evidence incriminating the Thai Rak Thai and the Democrat Party and we found that the cases are solid enough to forward to the high court,'' he said.

He said although the investigation file was 1,500 pages, the panel did not need to read every page because most were the same document as the one involved with the charges against the three small parties, which the political party registrar had submitted to the office one month ago. He said the investigation file incriminating the Democrat Party was also similar to that of Thai Rak Thai Party, which made it easy to resolve the cases since they have the same background information.

"All 11 panel members scrutinised all the cases in accordance to the facts without taking sides and without haste, without interference as alleged. I reiterate that we do not follow any one's order,'' he said.

He said although he believed that the evidence carries enough weight to prosecute the five parties, if the Constitution Court believed that the cases were not solid, the judges could seek additional evidence.

Election commissioner Prinya Nakchutree said the EC submitted the investigation files to dissolve the Democrat Party to the public prosecutors swiftly because the complaint was once filed with the EC and was dropped. "Do not think that the EC takes side. We cannot do that. If there is evidence, we have to prosecute them,'' he said.

The prosecutor's swift decision was questioned as the EC submitted the Democrat investigation file to the public prosecutor on Monday and the panel went through the 1,500-page file in less than 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the government yesterday decided to postpone issuing a royal decree to set the election date because of the pending court case, which may effect the status of political parties, said Suranand Vejjajiva, a Thai Rak Thai executive and caretaker PM's Office minister.