BANGKOK — Thailand’s anticorruption body has recommended that 250 former lawmakers be impeached, in the latest move targeting supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
National Anti-Corruption Commission spokesman Vicha Mahakun said Thursday the agency found the lawmakers had misused their authority by seeking to amend the now-defunct constitution to make the Senate fully, rather than partly, elected.
The Constitutional Court ruled in 2013 that the attempt to change the composition of the 150-member Senate was unlawful.
Vicha said the agency will submit its evidence to the interim National Legislative Assembly, appointed after a military coup last year. A vote for impeachment could ban the former lawmakers from political office for five years.
The assembly voted Thursday in a related case in which the anticorruption commission recommended the impeachment of 38 former senators for seeking to change the constitution, but fell short of the three-fifths majority needed to carry out the motion.
The moves by the anticorruption body, along with various court rulings, are widely seen as attempts to cripple the political machine of Thaksin, who was overthrown in a coup in 2006, and to prevent his allies from returning to power.
Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was prime minister until a controversial court decision forced her from office just a few days before last year’s coup. She was impeached earlier this year in connection with a money-losing rice subsidy scheme, barring her from office for five years.