Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon said yesterday the regimeappointed Senate would be "controllable" but denied that many candidates have close ties with himself and the regime leader.
Gen Prawit was responding to a reporter's question about the upper house. He is head of the National Council for Peace and Order's (NCPO) Senate selection committee.
The Prawit panel is shortlisting 400 candidates for the NCPO to select 194 to form a 250-member senate. It has been widely speculated that many will be former military officers with close links to Gen Prawit and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
In addition to 194 senators handpicked by the regime, the NCPO will choose 50 others from a pool of 200 candidates selected from a process supervised by the Election Commission (EC). The remaining six seats will be filled by the supreme commander, chiefs of the three armed forces, the national police chief, and the defence permanent secretary.
One of the key tasks of the senators, who will serve for five years during a transition period, is to join MPs in picking the prime minister.
While refusing to disclose the names of the other members of the Senate selection committee, Gen Prawit said the senators will represent all walks of life and insisted he did not know them in person.
In a separate development, EC chairman Ittiporn Boonpracong said an inquiry has been ordered into the conduct of politicians from the dissolved Thai Raksa Chart Party (TRC), who are allegedly encouraging people to vote "no" and prompt a poll re-run and urge their supporters to cast ballots for other parties.
His remarks followed media reports that a campaign is under way in the northern province of Phrae to urge people to cast "no" votes on ballot papers to force a re-run. The campaign appears to be exploiting a regulation, which says if the no-votes in either constituency outnumber the votes received by any of the other candidates, a re-run will need to be organised.
"The conducts might be an offence because the law is clear that voters must choose for themselves whom they will vote for," he said.
"They must not be persuaded or led. No one can tell them what to do or what not to do," he added.
