Thailand's former House Speaker Yongyuth Tiyapairat attended the first hearing at the Supreme Court on his alleged involvement in vote-buying Thursday morning.
Yongyuth heard the testimony of prosecution witnesses at the court.
One of the witnesses, Boontham Kamka, the head of Mae Chan district in Chiang Rai province, claimed that Yongyuth had bribed him in an attempt to sway votes for People Power Party (PPP) candidates in the December general election.
Thursday's hearing was the first session of a trial on electoral fraud charges against 47-year-old Yongyuth, a party-list MP and former deputy party leader of the ruling PPP party.
He announced resignation from the post of House Speaker and President of Parliament on April 30, after the Supreme Court accepted the appeal by the Election Commission (EC) which accused Yongyuth of bribing 10 district and village heads in exchange for mobilizing voters' support for him in the Dec. 23 general election.
According to the EC's probe, 10 village heads and sub-district chiefs in northern province Chiang Rai, where Yongyuth won a seat in the 480-member House of Representatives as a PPP candidate, had testified that they had each received 20,000 baht (606 U.S. dollars) in cash during the run-up to the December election in exchange for local voters' support for Yongyuth.
Yongyuth denied the charges, which he had branded as a "set-up" by political opponents, and said he resigned to uphold the dignity of the Parliament while fighting the court battle.
Yongyuth was elected as the House Speaker and President of Parliament on Jan. 22, after the PPP declared victory in the Dec. 23 election.
If convicted by the Supreme Court, Yongyuth would lose his seat as MP and face a five-year ban from electoral process.
A conviction will also give ground to the EC to appeal to the Constitutional Court to dissolve PPP for the alleged offenses of Yongyuth, in line with the 2007 Constitution.
In that case, all PPP party executives, most of whom are now part of the PPP-led cabinet, including PPP leader and new Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, would automatically lose their cabinet posts and be banned from political activity for five years, replaying what has taken place with the former ruling Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), founded by ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
The TRT was dissolved last May on electoral fraud charges allegedly committed by party executives, and all its 111 party executives, including Thaksin, were banned from politics for five years, in the aftermath of the 2006 coup that ousted the Thaksin administration.
Many former TRT members then joined the PPP, which won the post-coup general election last December by grabbing nearly half of the480 seats in the House of Representatives, and formed a coalition government with five other parties.
Yongyuth has dismissed speculation that his resignation was aimed at clearing the way for the PPP-led coalition government to place a new House Speaker in order to facilitate the Samak government's plan to amend the 2007 Constitution. He said a caretaker speaker could perform his job.
The PPP-led push to amend the 2007 Charter has been criticized by opponents as an attempt to rescue the PPP and two other coalition parties facing charges of electoral fraud.
On Wednesday, executives of PPP agreed unanimously to choose veteran MP Chai Chidchob as its candidate to be new House Speaker.
Source:Xinhua
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