Thailand’s newest pro-democracy party faces early legal challenge
Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission said August 8 it had ordered a probe of 44 opposition members of the parliament accused of breaking the ethics rules for lawmakers for having sponsored a 2021 bill, which failed, to amend the country’s controversial royal defamation, or lèse-majesté, law.
The announcement came a day after the Constitutional Court dissolved the progressive Move Forward Party, which won last year’s national election, for campaigning to soften the law, which prescribes up to 15 years in jail for each offense.
The court said the party’s efforts posed a threat to national security, and followed on from its January ruling that the campaign was a veiled attempt to upend Thailand’s constitutional monarchy governmental structure, a claim the party denied.
All 44 lawmakers now under investigation by the anti-corruption commission were Move Forward members. Five were banned from public office for 10 years in the August 7 ruling that dissolved the party. The other 39 have since joined the People’s Party, set up in the wake of Move Forward’s dissolution to take its place, and include its new leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut.
If the commission concludes the 39 did breach the ethics rules, it would then send the case to the Supreme Court, which could ban them from public office as well.
Analysts told VOA the previous court rulings on Move Forward’s campaign to amend the royal defamation law laid the groundwork for their possible convictions.
“The Constitutional Court has essentially delivered a verdict that could serve as a catalyst for upcoming verdicts against these 44 MPs,” said Napon Jatusripitak, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.
The Supreme Court may follow different procedures than the Constitutional Court and decide to call its own witnesses, he said.
“But it would be quite an interesting outcome if the Supreme Court ruled in a way that contradicts the Constitutional Court’s verdict, given that the Constitutional Court is treated as the highest court in Thailand,” he added.
Verapat Pariyawong, who teaches Thai law and politics at SOAS University of London, also pointed to the precedent set by even earlier court verdicts that banned leaders of Future Forward, a progressive party that was dissolved by court order in 2020 and then gave rise to Move Forward.
He said the case of Pannika Wanich was especially relevant. Pannika, a lawmaker for each party in turn, was banned from public office for life by the Supreme Court last year for breaking ethics rules by posting a photo online in 2010 deemed to disparage the monarchy.
“The MPs in this [new] case, they didn’t make remarks in the same way that Pannika did. But they sponsored or they agreed to support the draft legislation [to amend the royal defamation law] directly or tacitly. And if the court follows the interpretation in Pannika’s case, they could expand the scope of the law to cover those MPs and therefore ban them,” Verapat said.
Officially, Thailand’s constitutional monarchy is meant to stay out of politics. However, the country’s recent string of progressive parties, and much of their base, say it has long wielded outsized influence over the government in favor of Thailand’s military and conservative elites.
They accuse those forces of weaponizing the royal defamation law to persecute parties, lawmakers and activists seeking to rein them in and move Thailand toward a more genuine democracy.
Since 2020, Thailand’s courts have charged 272 people with breaking the royal defamation law, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, a local advocacy group.
Move Forward made amending the law, to limit who could file related court cases and lower the maximum jail term allowed, a central plank of the reform agenda that helped it win last year’s general election. Despite that win, conservative lawmakers blocked the party from winning a vote in the National Assembly for prime minister, shunting it into opposition.
Party supporters see the courts and commissions as doing the military and conservative elite’s bidding as well, and the broad language of some laws and rules as helping them do it.
The ethics rules the 39 People’s Party lawmakers are now accused of breaking say office holders must protect the country’s constitutional monarchy. The analysts, though, told VOA they give little counsel on what that means, leaving judges ample leeway.
“It’s open to interpretation, because … there is no clear definition about protection of the monarchy,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political scientist at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University.
“And when we talk about interpretation, it always means that if you are the target of the elite or the establishment then they could find anything to [rule] against you,” he added.
The analysts said the People’s Party is also running the risk of being dissolved altogether, as were Future Forward and Move Forward before it, by carrying on their agenda of amending the royal defamation law.
The party did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment. At a news conference on Aug. 9, though, party leader Natthaphong said they would “not be careless” in going about it, in hopes of avoiding their predecessors’ fate.
Whatever the new party’s fate, the analysts say the monarchy, or how conservative elites are seen to be using the laws that protect it for their own ends, will remain a major fault line defining Thai politics and dividing the public.
“The issue of the monarchy has been used by those politicians who would like to ensure that they remain in power,” said Verapat. “It’s those people who rely on issues of lèse-majesté to attack parties like MFP or People’s [Party], so that dynamic will continue as long as … the Constitutional Court can rely on lèse-majesté to disband political parties.”
Napon said that may also portent more rocky politics ahead for a country that has seen 13 coups over the past century and several rounds of mass, sometimes violent, protests over the last two decades.
“The problem is that it’s not clear that political parties can represent these divides effectively in parliament or during election campaigns due to legal limits, because these topics are considered highly sensitive and some off limits by the Constitutional Court,” he said.
“It means parliament will be very inept in representing actual divides in society,” he added. “And that leaves people with grievances that could only be expressed through means of street protest, which we have seen before did not lead to meaningful results other than … more repression and jail time.”