Ex-MPs not to be banned for bid to change Thai constitution

Thailand's Parliament today voted not to impeach 248 former MPs, most of them from ousted premier Yingluck Shinawatra's Pheu Thai Party, for attempting to amend the Constitution over the senate's composition.
Most members voted not to impeach each of the former MPs. The Pheu Thai party has been left powerless since the military seized power in a coup last year.
The National Legislative Assembly (NLA) had pushed a retroactive impeachment of the MPs over a 2013 attempt to make the upper house or senate a fully elected chamber, a move that was later deemed unconstitutional in the courts.
An impeachment would have seen the ex-MPs banned from politics for five years. It required 132 out of 220 assembly members to vote in favour.

"The National Legislative Assembly resolves not to impeach," Peerasak Porjit, the second vice president for the legislature, told delegates after the results for each ex-MP had been read out individually.