Thailand’s Constitutional Court has ordered the dissolution of the progressive, election-winning Move Forward Party (MFP), saying it violated the constitution when it pledged to amend the country’s lese-majeste law outlawing criticism of the royal family.
In its unanimous decision on Wednesday, the court in Bangkok also banned the party’s executive board, which includes its former leader Pita Limjaroenrat and current chief Chaithawat Tulathon, for 10 years.
MFP won the most seats in the 2023 general election, as young and urban voters swung behind its agenda for reform including of the strict royal defamation law, which rights groups say has been misused to stifle pro-democracy groups.
But Pita’s bid to become prime minister was blocked by conservative forces in the then military-appointed Senate. His political career was further shaken earlier this year when the Election Commission asked the country’s top court to dissolve MFP.
The decision comes six months after the same court ordered MFP to drop its plan to reform the law on royal insults, ruling it was unconstitutional and risked undermining the country’s system of governance with the king as head of state.
While the ruling is likely to anger millions of voters who backed the party, its impact could be limited.
While 10 MFP members have been banned, the ruling means 143 of the party’s lawmakers will keep their seats in parliament. They are expected to reorganise under a new party, as they did in 2020, when MFP’s predecessor, the Future Forward Party (FFP), was also banned.
Lawmakers of a dissolved political party can retain their seats if they move to a new party within 60 days.
MFP’s leaders said on Wednesday that its lawmakers would form a new party this week. Chaithawat also told a press conference that the court’s decision had set a dangerous precedent for the way the constitution is interpreted.
MFP said the Constitutional Court did not have jurisdiction to rule on the case and the petition filed by the Election Commission did not follow due process because the party was not given an opportunity to defend itself before it was submitted to the court.
What next?
Matthew Wheeler, senior Southeast Asia analyst for the Crisis Group, said the court’s decision was “not a surprise” but that it was unlikely to trigger large-scale protests because the party’s lawmakers would regroup.
“But the decision is a further illustration that the 2017 constitution, drafted at the behest of coupmakers and approved in a flawed referendum, was designed to curb the popular will rather than facilitate its expression,” Wheeler said in emailed comments.
“It shows that Thailand is still a long way from achieving a consensus on the appropriate sources of political legitimacy, with the establishment digging in its heels against the will of the electorate.”
The 2023 elections followed mass youth-led protests that made unprecedented calls for reform of the monarchy that rocked the royalist-military establishment. In the past 20 years, the military has staged two coups – the last one in 2014 – while the courts have brought down three prime ministers and dissolved several opposition parties.
Patrick Phongsathorn, a senior advocacy specialist at Thailand-based human rights NGO Fortify Rights, told Al Jazeera that the move against the MFP was the latest in a “broader pattern” in Thailand of “weaponising the judiciary against political opposition”, the case is “more significant” given the party’s huge popularity.
“[The] progressive genie is now out of the bottle and will be very hard to put back in,” he said.
As the FFP was replaced with the MFP, “some other party will be established to represent the views of this evolving social movement”, he said.
