BANGKOK, April 30 — Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has indicted 36 senators for misconduct in attempting to amend the constitution to make the Senate a fully elected body.
NACC spokesman Sansern Poljiak said the anti-graft commissioners agreed to indict 36 former elected senators, out of 50, and would forward the indictments to the Senate which will decide whether they will be impeached.
They could also face five-year bans from politics.
The NACC has pressed charges against 308 lawmakers — 50 of them senators, mostly elected whose terms have expired — accusing them of misconduct in connection with the draft Constitution amendment.
Of the 36 former senators, 22 were indicted because they signed in support of the unlawful amendment and voted for it in all three readings.
The second group of 13 former senators was indicted because they signed in support of the amendment and voted for it in the first and third readings.
Another one was inducted because he has voted in the second reading of the amendment.
The NACC decided it would announce its decision on caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s alleged dereliction of duty in allowing corruption to take place in the controversial rice-pledging scheme on May 8 or May 15.
The agency rejected her request to allow seven more witnesses to testify in the case.
