Suchon Chaleekrua, speaker of the outgoing Senate, said yesterday he had never heard of any kind of bloc voting among senators supposedly manipulated by the ruling Thai Rak Thai Party.

The denial came after Yasothon Senator Somboon Thongburan, who is seen as anti-government, contended that the Thai Rak Thai was preparing to buy many senators to vote for Election Commission nominees who are not hostile to the ruling party and its leader Thaksin Shinawatra.

Some Bt50 million has already been spent on bribing 80 senators to elect pro-government candidates for various independent organisations, Somboon said.

At least three out of the 10 EC nominees have been seen by some as antagonistic to Thaksin.

One is ex-senator Kaewsun Atibodhi, who participated in several anti-Thaksin rallies and published an anti-Thaksin booklet which was confiscated by police.

The second candidate deemed adversarial to the caretaker premier is former judge Nam Yimyaem, who chaired the EC fact-finding panel that implicated the Thai Rak Thai in hiring little-known parties to run in the April election.

The third candidate is Wasana Soipisut, a former Constitution Court judge who testified against Thaksin when the latter was accused of attempting to lobby Constitution Court judges to help him escape a guilty verdict during the 2001 asset-concealment case.

Suchon said the Supreme Court's judgement in selecting the 10 nominees was already a guarantee of having good and able people as new election commissioners, so there was no need for a bloc vote.

"I don't think anyone would dare. The new commissioners will be around for just two years, and a new selection process will then take place. Talk of about bribery just reflects negative and non-constructive thinking ... There shouldn't be news like this, and I will inquire into [Somboon's] claim."

Caretaker Deputy Prime Minister Suwat Liptapanlop said the allegation was probably false, because the will of the people was now to have a fair election so that the political turmoil could be brought to an end.

It's also not possible to meddle with the Senate, he said. "The Thai Rak Thai Party definitely has no policy of interfering with the Senate's work."

Phayao Senator Sa-nguan Nuntachate insisted that he had never come across such bloc voting during his six years in the upper chamber. He said some people did not care what they said and some were just out for notoriety.

He challenged Somboon to come up with evidence to support his accusation, which was damaging the Senate as an institution.

The Senate will convene on Tuesday at 1pm to discuss the selection process for the new election commissioners. This will start with forming an ad-hoc committee to scrutinise the background of each nominee, Suchon said.

No timetable has been set, but Suchon said the fear of the media that the EC could not be formed in time to hold the election on October 15 was nothing more than the opinion of the media.