BANGKOK, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's Election Commission (EC)will on Tuesday rule on an electoral fraud allegation against House Speaker Yongyuth Tiyapairat, which might lead to a legal battle with the newly elected government led by the People Power Party (PPP), to which Yongyuth belongs.

    EC Commissioner Prapan Naikowit said Monday there was enough evidence to issue a ruling and there was no need to question any more witness, news network The Nation reported.

    A special subcommittee under EC has earlier handed over its findings on the accusations against Yongyuth to the full EC.

    According to the subcommittee, 10 village heads and sub-district chiefs of northern province Chiang Rai, where Yongyuth contested victoriously as a PPP party-list MP candidate in the Dec.23 general election, have testified that they had each received 20,000 baht (606 U.S. dollars) in cash during the run-up to the election in exchange for local voters' support for Yongyuth.

    If the ruling of the five-member EC top authority upholds the findings of the subcommittee, it is expected to submit the case to the Supreme Court to seek the disqualification of Yongyuth as an elected parliament member.

    If the Supreme Court accepts the EC's petition and finds Yongyuth guilty of alleged involvement in the vote-buying scam, Yongyuth must step down from the House Speaker post, and would be stripped of his MP status and banned from running in a by-election.

    Yongyuth will have to fight the mandatory trial as there is no parliamentary immunity for offences under electoral law. His possible conviction may also lead to the dissolution of his party.

    If the EC finds the PPP involved in Yongyuth's alleged offences, it will move to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on whether the party should be dissolved to take responsibility for Yongyuth's alleged wrongdoing.

    If the party is dissolved, all PPP party executives, most of whom are now part of the PPP-led cabinet, including PPP leader and new Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, would automatically lose their cabinet posts and be banned from political activity for five years, repeating what has come on the former ruling Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), founded by ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

    The TRT was dissolved last May on electoral fraud charges and 111 party executives, including Thaksin, were banned from politics for five years, in the aftermath of the Sept. 19 military coup in 2006 that ousted the Thaksin administration.

    Many former TRT members then joined the PPP, which won the post-coup general election last December by grabbing nearly half of the480 seats in the House of Representatives, and formed a coalition government with five other parties earlier this year.

    The 47-year-old Yongyuth was elected on Jan. 22 as the new House Speaker.

    Yongyuth, former deputy leader of the PPP and a close aide to Thaksin, has insisted on his innocence, and alleged that it was a "set-up" to involve him in electoral fraud.

    The EC's ruling would come on the same day Thaksin is expected to announce when he will wrap up his self-exile overseas since the coup and return to Thailand, where the ex-premier faces a series of corruption and abuse of power charges.