The controversial organic bill on the election of MPs is being referred to the charter court to ensure it does not violate the constitution, according to three small parties that sought the court action.
The New Palang Dharma Party, the Thai Teachers for People Party and the Pheu Chart Thai Party jointly sought the review via Parliament President Chuan Leekpai on Thursday.
In their petition, supported by 106 MPs and senators, to the court, the three parties pointed to content in the organic bill which may contradict the charter and described the potentially problematic way the bill came to be adopted by parliament.
The petition also stated that the issues being put to the Constitutional Court for review are not directly related to the contentious method of calculating the number of list MPs to be allocated to parties in general elections. Large parties support dividing the party-list votes by 100 to determine a party's share of list MPs while small parties have rallied behind the list votes being divided by 500.
Rather, the issues the three small parties are raising with the court go deeper than the calculation method.
In fact, the parties have sought the court's ruling on whether Section 25 of the organic bill was constitutionally valid, as it might be in conflict with Section 93 of the charter, which governs how list MPs are decided.
Also, the parties requested the court's ruling on Section 26, which is linked to Section 131 in the organic bill which bars votes that had been dishonestly won from being tallied and counted. Section 26 has been written in a way that could be construed as defying the constitution, its critics say.
The petition noted the organic bill on the election of MPs may not have been legitimately adopted.
The bill, sponsored by the Election Commission (EC), did not pass parliamentary scrutiny since it was adopted at the last minute after the previous version of the bill was technically dropped on account of its failure to be approved by parliament by the deadline.
That previous version of the bill had been scrutinised. However, the majority of lawmakers voted to switch the calculation of list MPs. Instead of the list votes being divided by 100, a majority of parliamentarians opted for the number being divided by 500, which was backed by small parties.
Large parties which stand firmly behind the 100 divisor were accused of staying away from the parliamentary sittings in order to force a lack of quorum which recurred until the day the amendment to the organic bill was supposed to have passed parliament.
It turned out the quorum fell short even on the day of the deadline, causing the organic bill to be sunk. The demise of the bill effectively prompted its replacement by the EC-sponsored bill supportive of the 100 divisor.