House speaker vows

House speaker vows

House speaker vows to tackle lack of quorum

• Published: 3/08/2011 at 04:39 PM
• Online news: Politics

House Speaker Somsak Kiatsuranont on Wednesday called a meeting on Friday when MPs will vote to elect the new prime minister, and undertakes to tackle the problem of House meetings frequently being short of a quorum of MPs.

Mr Somsak was speaking after a ceremony at parliament when he received the royal command appointing him the House speaker and Charoen Chankomol and Wisuth Chainarun the first and second deputy speakers.

From left: Charoen Chankomol, Somsak Kiatsuranont and Wisuth Chainarun (Photo by Chanat Katanyu)

Concrete measures would be issued in writing to effectively solve the problem of House meetings being short of quorum, he said.
He hoped MPs would cooperate.
Mr Somsak said he had called a meeting of the House his Friday at 2pm, when MPs would vote in the new prime minister.
Each nomination for the post of prime minister must be supported by at least 20 MPs, he said.
The process would be carried out openly with individual MPs verbally announcing their vote for or against each nominee, or their abstention, as required by the constitution, Mr Somsak said.
He pledged to remain impartial  in performing his duty as speaker and to strictly enforce  meeting regulations.
First deputy  speaker Charoen Chankomol said political parties were expected to reach a settlement next week on membership of the 35 standing committees of the House of Representatives,.
He said he would instruct the House secretariat to invite representatives of all political parties to meet and discuss this matter soon.
Members of political parties will be proportionally appointed to various committees and a settlement on this matter was expected to be reached no later than next week, Mr Charoen said.
Mr Charoen said he wanted to finish doing this quickly because it had taken the previous House of Representatives more than three months to set up the needed committees.
He did anticipate that there would problems over who should chair each committee, since every party wants its MPs to lead House committees.
On the problem of House meetings frequently being short of a quorum, Mr Charoen said all political parties would be asked to cooperate and ensure their MPs understand that it is their duty to attend House meetings.
Strict enforcement of House regulations alone would not solve the problem, he added.