A complaint was lodged with the Office of the Ombudsman today (Friday) by Sonthiya Sawasdee, a political activist, asking the Constitutional Court to investigate Pheu Thai party’s campaign promise to distribute 10,000 baht in digital money to each of the 55 million Thai people aged over 16.
Sonthiya said in the complaint that such a manifesto promisemay violate Section 258 (2) and (3) of the Constitution, which could result in the dissolution of the party.
The political activist said that, according to the Pheu Thai party, the policy will require about 560 billion baht of funding, or about 20% of Thailand’s national budget.
He noted that, during the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the Pheu Thai party introduced the rice pledging scheme to help rice farmers, but the scheme ended up causing a loss of about 884 billion baht to the state and a burden for successive governments to repay lender, the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, to the tune of about 35 billion baht annually.
Sonthiya said that he is afraid that the Pheu Thai party’s 10,000 baht giveaway will end up like the rice pledging scheme fiasco.
He explained that he decided to take the case to the Constitution Court via the Office of the Ombudsman, instead of the Election Commission (EC), because he does not trust the EC, noting that the election watchdog has not disclosed the details of where the funding would come from and whether the policy is worth the expenditure.
