In what was seen as the possible start of a tit-for-tat battle between the Government and Opposition camps, the Future Forward party is to ask the Election Commission (EC) to check the qualifications of government coalition Palang Pracharat party-list MP Ms. Watanya Wong-opasee. Some believe she may also have owned shares in a media company when she registered her election candidacy ahead of the March 24th general election.
Future Forward spokeswoman Pannika Wanich said today (Friday) that she had assigned the party’s lawyers to lodge a petition with the EC seeking an investigation into the suspected shareholding.
Ms. Pannika claimed that, although Ms. Watanya had transferred all her shares in the Nation Group at the time, she discovered that the Palang Pracharat MP submitted the Bor Mor Jor-6 form, regarding the change of share ownership, to the Business Development Department of the Commerce Ministry about six months after the completion of candidate registration.
She said that Ms. Watanya’s case has similarities to that of Future Forward party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, in the sense that the Constitutional Court has ruled that Thanathorn was still a shareholder in V Luck Media, even though he had transferred all his shares to his mother, because his name was still in the list of shareholders on the Bor Mor Jor-6 form.
Ms. Pannika added that she would like the Constitutional Court to suspend Ms. Watanya from performing her duty as an MP and charge her with violating the election law, as the legal precedent had been set in Thanathorn’s case.
Pannika and Watanya have long been engaged in an online war of words over various issues.
