The Move Forward Party (MFP) said the Constitutional Court has no power to dissolve it and a previous ruling on the party's stance on the lese majeste law is irrelevant to the ongoing disbandment case.
MFP chief advisor and former leader Pita Limjaroenrat said at the party's headquarters on Sunday that he and his party's legal affairs team had studied the constitution and found no section that empowered the Constitutional Court to disband a political party or revoke political rights.
Mr Pita also said that in the ongoing dissolution case his party had been unable to receive adequate information about the case nor any opportunity to defend against the accusations levelled in it.
In addition, he said that the Jan 31 ruling of the Constitutional Court was irrelevant to the present case. On Jan 31, the Constitutional Court warned the party to halt its efforts to rewrite Section 112 of the Criminal Code, aka the lese majeste law.
Mr Pita said that the warning concerned something that had not yet happened, while the trial of the ongoing case concerning alleged threats against the constitutional monarchy should focus on what had already happened.
The former MFP leader said that parties should only be dissolved to protect democracy and party dissolution should be imposed to tackle urgent problems when there was no other solution.
Attempts to amend Section 112 of the Criminal Code would naturally be proposed to parliament, Mr Pita said, but no such a bill had reached parliament.
Even if such a bill is submitted, parliament can then stop it on the grounds that it threatens the constitutional monarchy. Therefore, Mr Pita said, the matter was not an urgent issue that would necessitate party dissolution.
The party held a press conference despite the Constitutional Court's request that concerned parties refrain from expressing opinions on the issue pending its trial. The court said that doing so could mislead the public and affect the trial.
The Election Commission (EC) in March submitted a petition asking the court to rule on dissolving the party. It was responding to the court's ruling on Jan 31 that Move Forward's efforts to change Section 112 of the Criminal Code, known as the lese-majeste law, indicated an intention to undermine the constitutional monarchy.
Based on the ruling, the EC argued that the party violated Section 92 of the organic law on political parties. The section gives the court the power to dissolve any party seen as threatening the constitutional monarchy.
The court accepted the petition for hearing on April 3.
The petitioner asked the court to disband the party, revoke the rights of party executives to stand for election and prohibit anyone who loses those rights from registering or serving as executives of a new party for 10 years, under Sections 92 and 94 of the law.
The amendments proposed by Move Forward included a requirement that any lese-majeste complaint must be filed by the Bureau of the Royal Household. Currently, any individual or group can file a royal defamation complaint against anyone else, and police are obliged to investigate it. As a result, the party has said, the law has been used by politicians and other authority figures to stifle dissenting opinions.
The party has also called for reduced sentences for lese-majeste convictions.
A conviction under Section 112 currently carries a sentence of between 3 and 15 years. Courts often cite the severity of the offence, based on the sentences, as the reason for denying bail to people awaiting trial or appealing their convictions.
Jailed activist Netiporn “Boong” Sanesangkhom, 28, died on June 11 from the effects of a hunger strike she went on after repeatedly being denied bail, sparking global condemnation.
