Thailand’s Election Commission (EC) announced yesterday it would investigate the leader of the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP) over whether he was qualified to run in the general election last month.
Pita Limjaroenrat is the frontrunner to become Thailand’s next prime minister after leading his party to a surprising victory, clinching 151 seats in the 500-seat House of Representatives, but faces a host of challenges to his candidacy.
The EC announced yesterday that it was looking into whether Pita registered as a parliamentary candidate knowing that he could be disqualified because of his ownership of shares in a media firm, which is prohibited under election rules.
“There is sufficient information to suspect that the candidate is unfit or prohibited from seeking public office, according to electoral regulations, to further investigate Pita,” election commission chairman Ittiporn Boonprakong told Reuters. “The Election Commission has set up an investigatory committee to investigate further.”
The EC will assess whether Pita breached Section 42(3) and Section 151 of the organic law, governing the election of parliamentarians. Section 151 alone carries penalties of 10 years in prison, a fine of up to 200,000 baht, and a 20-year ban from voting or taking part in politics. The six commissioners have until July 13 to release the official election results, after which parliament will hold its prime ministerial vote – most likely in early August.
Since the election, Pita has come under fire for owning 42,000 shares in the defunct broadcaster iTV, and conservatives have filed several complaints seeking his disqualification on these grounds. The MFP leader has since declared that the company has not broadcast since 2007, and that he transferred the shares to a relative prior to election day.
On Friday, the Election Commission dismissed the complaints seeking Pita’s disqualification over the ownership of the iTV shares, on the grounds that the petitions were filed too late. But the petitions reportedly contained information that could still be used to expel Pita from parliament and potentially derail his plans to form government.
The announcement came as the party raised questions about the integrity of minutes recorded during and April 26 shareholder meeting of iTV’s parent company Intouch Holdings. Pita last week said that following the meeting, he grew concerned that some were attempting to portray iTV as an active media organization with the intention of undermining his political fortunes.
Some evidence in this direction was offered during an episode of Channel 3’s investigative program, Three Miti News, which aired on Sunday night. According to a report by BenarNews, the program obtained the minutes of the April 26 meeting, which showed Kim Siritaweechai, the director of Intouch Holdings, stating that iTV was indeed an active media company. But Three Miti News obtained a leaked video of the meeting in which Kim says the opposite: that iTV has not operated as a media company since 2007.
For its own part, the MFP claims that the minutes were fabricated in order to provide grounds for Pita’s expulsion from parliament.
“This doesn’t seem to be a casual mistake or standard procedure of report preparation,” the MFP’s Secretary General Chaitawat Tulathon said in a statement to the media quoted by BenarNews. “Instead, it may be an intentional modification to align with subsequent documents, creating questions about potential foul play to prevent MFP forming a coalition government.”
This is just one of a number of hurdles that lie between Pita and forming Thailand’s next government under his leadership. The MFP has formed a coalition with the opposition Pheu Thai Party and six other smaller parties, but the 313 seats that the coalition holds falls short of the 367-seat threshold needed to prevail in the joint parliamentary vote. Most of the 250-member Senate, which was appointed by the military as a bulwark against anti-establishment candidates, is expected to oppose his candidacy.
It is unclear when the EC’s investigation will conclude. But one former commissioner told the Bangkok Post that even the presence of an ongoing investigation could give senators the pretext to oppose his prime ministerial candidacy, even though the MFP won the most popular support at the election.
“The EC’s decision to pursue this criminal case against Mr. Pita, although it may not be made final in time, is enough an excuse for many senators who intend not to vote for Mr. Pita to justify their move,” Somchai Srisutthiyakorn told the paper.
Both the timing and the flimsy nature of the charges against Pita is an example of how the protracted period between election day and the selection of the prime minister – a purposeful contrivance of the Constitution passed by the military government in 2017 – offers ample time for legal chicanery to derail any opposition party popular enough to threaten entrenched interests. A month since election day, it is no clearer whether the MFP which in any ordinary democracy would already have assumed office, will lead Thailand’s next government.