The Election Commission (EC) submitted a petition to the Constitutional Court today, seeking the dissolution of the Move Forward party and the barring of the party’s executive members from politics, in accordance with Section 92 (1) and (2) of the Political Parties Act.
This latest move follows the EC’s unanimous ruling, on March 12th, that there is enough evidence to believe that the Move Forward party attempted to overthrow Constitutional Monarchy and acted in a way deemed hostile to Constitutional Monarchy.
On January 31st, the Constitutional Court ruled, by a unanimous decision, that Pita Limjaroenrat, former Move Forward party leader, and the party had exercised their rights and liberties to attempt to overthrow the Constitutional Monarchy, by proposing amendments to Section 112 of the Criminal Code (the lèse majesté law), and had adopted the amendments as an election campaign policy.
The EC’s decision comes two days ahead of its weekly meeting, which normally takes place on Wednesday.
Former election commissioner Somchai Srisutthiyakorn recently said that the Constitutional Court will take no more than two months to reach a decision.
He said that there is a slim chance that the party will escape dissolution, adding that it must assess whether it will wait until there is a ruling from the court or let its party-list MPs, who sit on the executive committee, to resign now so that the other party members on the list can move up to fill the void, hence maintaining the number of party-list seats in the House.
Alternatively, it could let the constituency MPs resign to join a new party, to retain their parliamentary status, as this process must be completed with 60 days of a ruling from the court to dissolve the party.
