The Thai Constitutional Court yesterday cleared thwarted prime ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat of contravening election law in a case that could have seen him banned from politics, reinstating him as a lawmaker.
The 43-year-old led the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP) to win the most votes in last year’s general election, but was blocked from becoming prime minister after he was suspended as a lawmaker in July.
His party was excluded from the governing coalition after the powerful establishment was spooked by the MFP’s calls to reform the kingdom’s strict royal insult laws, the military and business monopolies.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Constitutional Court ruled by eight votes to one that Pita had not broken rules banning members of parliament from owning shares in media companies.
The case revolved around shares in the long-defunct iTV television station, which Pita says he inherited from his father when he died.
“ITV was not operating as a media company on the day the party submitted the respondent’s name for election,” Judge Punya Udchachon said in reading the court’s verdict in the case. “Holding the shares did not violate the law. The court has ruled his MP status has not ended.”
There were jubilant scenes outside the court as dozens of MFP supporters wearing the party’s orange colors cheered and chanted “PM Pita.”
After the ruling, Pita said he aimed to return to parliament “as soon as possible,” although it is not clear when that would be.
“We are asking the parliament when I am allowed to be back in — there is a discrepancy between two organizations, the court and the parliament. When I am allowed, I will be there,” he told reporters.
Even before the ruling, Pita said that he would run for office again — but if the court had ruled against him, he would have faced disqualification from parliament altogether.
He reiterated in an interview late last year that he would take another tilt at the premiership, saying he was “not giving up.”
However, another challenge looms next week when the same court considers a petition arguing that MFP’s pledge to reform lese majeste laws amounted to an attempt to overthrow the democratic government with the king as the head of state.
Pita said that he was “confident” in the second case.
The iTV case against Pita bore similarities to a 2019 suit, when popular progressive Thai politician Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit was disqualified as a lawmaker for holding media shares.
Thanathorn’s Future Forward Party, the predecessor of the MFP, was later dissolved by the courts in a separate case, which led to massive pro-democracy demonstrations.
During the election campaign last year, Pita re-energized young and urban Thais exhausted after the dwindling protest movement and weary of a near-decade of military rule.
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