Thailand’s constitutional court will decide on Wednesday whether the country’s most popular party should be dissolved over its election promise to reform the country’s strict lese majesty law.
Move Forward, a youthful pro-reform party, won the most votes in the 2023 election after pledging major changes to the country’s political system, including to amend a law punishes criticism of the monarchy with up to 15 years in prison on a single charge. However, the party and its leader were blocked from taking power by military royalist opponents, and have since faced legal cases.
The constitutional court could opt to dissolve the party, and ban its executive committee from politics for 10 years, including its leader Pita Limjaroenrat, over the latest case. In January, the same court ruled that its pledge to reform lese-majesty law was unlawful and that it must cease such efforts.
Pita has said previously that the party has a succession plan in place, and that a broader pro-democracy movement will continue. “Don’t give in, don’t lose hope. Keep the anger,” he told supporters this weekend at a campaign event in Ratchaburi, western Thailand. The fight was not about him, or Move Forward, he said, but “for the people’s rights”.
“I hope I am the last one [to be banned]. I hope Move Forward is the last party [to be dissolved],” he said, citing the many other parties that have suffered a similar fate.
Thailand’s courts have frequently dissolved political parties, while the country has experienced two coups since 2006, part of an ongoing power struggle between popular parties and the conservative establishment.
Move Forward’s predecessor, Future Forward, was disbanded by a court ruling in 2020 for violating election funding rules, in a case its supporters said was politically motivated. The judgement triggered mass youth-led protests, which called for changes to make the country more democratic, and broke a longstanding taboo by calling for reform of the royal family. At least 272 people have since been charged with lese majesty. In May, the political activist Netiporn Sanae-sangkhom, 28, who was charged under the law, died in pre-trial detention after spending 65 days on hunger strike calling for an end to the imprisonment of political dissidents.
Move Forward had appealed to young people who took part in such protests, however it also managed to attract support from a much wider cross section of voters who wanted political change after almost a decade of being ruled by former coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha.
There are no indications that, if Move Forward is to be dissolved, it would immediately lead to large scale protests. However, analysts say that even if the party is dissolved, this will not undo public sentiment, especially among younger generations, who have demanded changes to Thailand’s political system.
“If the Move Forward Party gets dissolved, maybe [young people] will not immediately jump out to take action or to demonstrate against the ruling, but still in the long term – they are not going to change their minds,” said Panuwat Panduprasert, political science professor at Chiang Mai University.
On Wednesday morning, ahead of the ruling, Pita told AFP the party was “highly confident” in the facts and argument it had presented to the court. “We hope the court will take these into serious consideration and believe that the rule of law exists in Thailand,” he said.
“The issue is not what we will do if we are dissolved – that is already taken care of and our ideas will survive – but rather the pattern of weaponising the judiciary and independent bodies that we should pay attention to,” Pita said.
“I hope that the Thai people do not view the party’s dissolution as a normal strategy employed by the Thai elite.
“We should not normalise this behaviour or accept the use of a politicised court as a weapon to destroy political parties,” he said.
Source: theguardian.com
