Parliament officials are still puzzling over how a pornographic image emerged on screen in the House chamber during the charter amendment debate on Wednesday afternoon.
Porn quiz in the House
DemocratMPNat Bantadtan, son of Democrat partylistMPand executive Banyat, testifies before the House Speaker over allegations he watched a pornographic image on his mobile phone inside the House after pictures of him apparently doing so appeared in the media yesterday. CHANAT KATANYU
House secretary-general Pithoon Poomhiran said he had instructed his deputy Khamphi Ditthakorn to investigate the image and had expected an answer yesterday.
Mr Pithoon believed some House staff were behind the incident which he said had seriously tarnished the image of the Thai parliament. He wants to punish any staff involved and said if the wrongdoer was not exposed, he would impose across-the-board punishments.
Mr Khamphi called a meeting of officials which lasted for more than three hours yesterday afternoon but failed to get to the bottom of who was responsible for the pornographic image.
He said they did not find any House officials responsible and parliament audio-visual staff were already banned from watching movies or images on duty.
Mr Khamphi would wait for experts to inspect the software of the AV control room at parliament. The checks will be concluded before Monday.
He will also find out if anyone could have hacked into the parliament's AV system. He said that plasma screen displays in the House chamber received wireless transmissions of pictures.
Meanwhile, Democrat MP for Bangkok Nat Bantadtan admitted yesterday to looking at another pornographic image during a House meeting.
In response to a published photo of him apparently looking at pornography on his smartphone in parliament on Wednesday, Mr Nat told the press yesterday he had to use his phone to follow up on work and sometimes his friends posted messages or images on social network sites which he could access via his phone as well.
He admitted he had looked at a pornographic photo but said he had done so only briefly after a friend had sent him the photo as a joke.