Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Tuesday insisted that he is in no position to influence the Senate to endorse his bid to carry on as PM after the next election.
He was speaking after some senators hinted that they would vote for him to return as prime minister for another term in the next election.
Senator Wanchai Sornsiri had said in a recent Facebook post that some senators, including himself, will not vote for Paetongtarn "Ung Ing" Shinawatra of the Pheu Thai Party, who is expected to be nominated as the party's prime ministerial candidate in the upcoming election, even if Pheu Thai wins a landslide victory.
Gen Prayut said on Tuesday, "I cannot control the Senate. Senators have their personal opinions."
Senator Seree Suwanpanont also said, "Most senators have agreed that they will vote in the same way. Not only for Gen Prayut and Gen Prawit [Wongsuwon], others will also stand a chance [of becoming prime minister]."
Deputy Prime Minister and Bhumjaithai Party leader Anutin Charnvirakul said: "No one is above a popular mandate."
"Don't make predictions in advance. The most important thing will happen after the poll. Parliamentarians must act in line with the people's mandate," Mr Anutin said.
Pheu Thai leader Cholnan Srikaew said on Monday that Mr Wanchai's comment violates the rights and freedom of those who support Pheu Thai and Ms Paetongtarn.
However, the party does respect the Senate as a whole and still believes the Senate will respect the voices of Pheu Thai voters, which would help the party win more than 250 seats in the House, he said.
Mr Wanchai's remark over the weekend simply was an opinion of an individual senator and should not be generalised as the opinion of all senators, he said.
The constitution gives the Senate and MPs a role in co-electing a prime minister in parliament.
After the 2019 general election, the coup-appointed 250 senators overwhelmingly voted for Gen Prayut, who was nominated by the Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) as prime minister.
Gen Prayut is now a prime ministerial candidate of the United Thai Nation Party, while the PPRP has decided to nominate its party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon as its PM candidate.
In another development, the Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday decided to seek a Constitutional Court ruling on the inclusion of non-Thais in its method of calculating the number of people represented by each MP and in the redrawing of the constituency boundaries for the next poll, according to a source.
Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam hailed the EC's decision to ask the court to clarify the issue.
He said he believed the court should deliver a ruling ahead of the next election -- scheduled to take place on May 7 this year. As the matter involves pressing legal technicalities, the court should not take too long to consider it, he said.
According to the EC, three groups of non-Thais are included in the population database, which it used to guide the redrawing of constituency boundaries.
These include people with permanent residence permits, those with temporary residence and also individuals who have been living in Thailand for more than ten years.
However, the groups exclude migrant workers from neighbouring countries.
Chaithawat Tulathon, secretary-general of the opposition Move Forward Party (MFP), previously said the party is concerned the lack of clarity in the EC's method to redraw electoral boundaries might end up causing the election result to be declared invalid, the way it was declared invalid in 2006.
