Thai Agency Seeks Break Up of High-Profile Opposition Party
Thai Agency Seeks Break Up of Highest-Profile Opposition Party
(Bloomberg) -- Thailand’s Election Commission petitioned a court to consider the break up of the country’s most high-profile opposition party, whose leader has warned that its dissolution could spark protests.
Loans of 191.2 million baht ($6.3 million) to the Future Forward party from its chief Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit breached financing rules for political parties, the commission said in a statement Wednesday in Bangkok.
“We absolutely disagree with the commission’s decision,” Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, the party’s secretary-general, said in a briefing. “We will continue to go forward with our duties. The decision today can’t stop our journey.”
Future Forward is less than two years old but surged in Thailand’s disputed March election, which came after almost five years under a junta. Thanathorn is a critic of the royalist establishment’s grip on power, and his party’s goals include rewriting the military-backed charter and breaking up oligopolies.
The commission asked the Constitutional Court to mull the financing case. The usual next step is for the court to decide whether to accept it or not.
Thanathorn said last week that Thailand could see street protests again if establishment forces continue to resist democratic change, and signaled that dissolution could be a flash-point for demonstrations.
Call for Calm
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha, who led the junta and then returned as premier after the election, called for calm if Future Forward is broken up. The process is a judicial one and the ruling coalition has no role in it, he told reporters Wednesday.
Future Forward emerged as the third-largest party in parliament after the election. It became part of an opposition bloc that controls almost half the lower house, and which has questioned the fairness of the March poll.
Thanathorn, a former business tycoon, was barred from parliament in a ruling last month for breaching media shareholding rules, accusations he said were politically motivated.
Judges dissolved a party opposed to military rule in the run-up to the election. The party, Thai Raksa Chart, was linked to exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. The dissolution didn’t spark unrest, but bloody street clashes occurred in the past when another Thaksin-linked party was disbanded.
A spike in political risk could add to the challenges facing trade-dependent Thailand. Its economy is on course for the slowest expansion in five years in 2019, as currency strength and the fallout of the U.S.-China trade war both take their toll.
To contact the reporter on this story: Siraphob Thanthong-Knight in Bangkok at rthanthongkn@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sunil Jagtiani at sjagtiani@bloomberg.net, Margo Towie
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