Govt may be left with majority of 8

Of the 71 MPs being investigat-ed by the Election Commission for alleged equity-rule violations, 41 are from coalition parties while the remaining 30 are in the opposition.

The lawmakers are accused of holding shares in media business-es or companies awarded state concessions, which would break Articles 48 and 265 of the Constitution respectively.

Senator Ruangkrai Leekitwattana and MP Supachai Jaisamut, when he was with the now-defunct People Power Party, filed petitions separately last year with the EC calling for an inquiry into the shareholdings and whether they broke the charter.

The EC recently resolved to disqualify 16 senators on similar allegations. The same decision is expected to be made in the cases against the MPs. Senate Speaker Prasopsuk Boondet says he expects the EC to apply the same standards in cases against MPs, arguing that the agency may find it difficult to explain to the com-munity if different standards are applied.

The speaker is required by law to forward such decisions by the EC to the Constitution Court for a ruling on whether the accused MPs and senators should be disqualified.

If the EC makes the same rul-ing in its cases against MPs and the court endorses that decision, dozens of coalition MPs will be disqualified. This will make it necessary for by-elections to be held to fill vacant seats of constituency MPs. Disqualified MPs from the proportional system of representation will be replaced by the people next on their party lists.

At present, there are 474 MPs in the House of Representatives - 269 from coalition parties and 205 from opposition parties. The coalition now has 32 MPs more than the half mark of all the Lower House MPs. As 20 of the MPs are concurrently Cabinet members, they are prevented by law from voting on matters relat-ing to government work. Whenever the rule is applied, the coalition actually has only 12 MPs more than the required majority.

In the worst-case scenario, if the 71 MPs are disqualified by the EC and the Constitution Court rules against all of them, the number of Lower House members would be reduced to 412, with nine party-list MPs being replaced by their party colleagues.

And half of the Lower House, before by-elections to replace the vacant seats, would be 206 MPs.

With the number of coalition MPs reduced to 228, there would be 22 MPs more than the required majority. When the 14 MPs in Cabinet are prevented from voting in certain matters (six others are facing disqualification), the coalition would have only eight MPs more than the halfway mark in the House. All of them would be needed to attend every important House voting.

However, this threat is not a pressing one for the coalition. The Senate speaker said he expected the entire process to take at least two months before the Constitution Court makes its rul-ing in the case against the MPs.

The coalition could get more MPs from resultant by-elections - if they don't lose seats to the opposition.

busarakom@nationgroup.com