PPRP to ask court to not suspend MPs

The Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) will next week lodge a petition with the Constitutional Court asking it not to temporarily suspend its MPs accused of violating media share-holding rules.

Thossapol Pengsom, head of the party's legal team, said his team is preparing evidence to back its injunction request after a group of 27 party MPs were accused of breaching the charter's rule on media shareholdings.

There are wide concerns that these MPs might be suspended from doing their jobs in the same fashion as Future Forward Party (FFP) leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit was when the Constitutional Court accepted a petition for a ruling on whether the FFP boss had breached the same media shareholding rules.

A total of 41 government MPs face eligibility reviews by the Constitutional Court.

The rest are from the Democrat Party, the Bhumjaithai Party, the Action Coalition for Thailand Party (ACT), the Chartpattana Party and the Prachaphiwat Party.

They are accused of holding shares in companies whose memorandums state that media is one of the business objectives, even though the nature of their business is not media-related.

It is not yet known when the court will accept the case which was forwarded by the House speaker last Wednesday.

Mr Thossapol said if the party MPs are suspended from duty, not only the affairs of the House of Representatives, but also the work of the new government will be affected.

"If they are suspended, the government won't be able to implement its policy because the government has yet to announce its policy to parliament," he said.

He also said while the allegations against the party MPs and Mr Thanathorn centre on media share-holding, the facts and the details are different and they should not be compared.

He added that the case against Mr Thanathorn was examined by the Election Commission before it was handed over to the Constitutional Court.