The royalist leader of the Thai Pakdee Party has demanded a probe into the status of the People’s Party to which MPs of the disbanded Move Forward Party (MFP) have just moved, questioning whether the destination party has enough branches to be qualified.
Thai Pakdee Party leader Dr Warong Dechgitvigrom said on his Facebook page on Sunday that he would ask the Election Commission (EC) to investigate whether the People's Party should be disqualified for having too few branches.
He said that the People’s Party was the renamed version of the old Thinkakhaochaovilai Party but he doubted that it had enough branches nationwide to maintain its political party status.
Dr Warong said the law governing political parties stipulated that a party would be automatically disqualified if it did not have at least one branch per region for one year.
He said he learned from the EC website that the Thinkakhaochaovilai Party, founded in 2012, had three branches: two in the North and one in the Central Plains. It did not have a branch in the South and the Northeast.
“For transparency, the EC must check it and inform people of the details of its branches on a yearly basis,” Dr Warong said.
“If the Thinkakhaochaovilai Party has not had branches in four regions for one year, it will lose its status by the law. This means that the People’s Party cannot use the disqualified party,” he said.
He said that his party would file a petition on the issue with the EC.
Shortly after the Constitutional Court dissolved the election-winning Move Forward Party last week, MFP MPs moved to the People’s Party to maintain their MP status.
The People’s Party announced in its Facebook page on Sunday that it received donations worth more than 20 million baht altogether within 32 hours and almost 40,000 people applied to become members in less than two days.
The main opposition party announced it would form a single-party government after the next general election.
Thai Pakdee Party leader Dr Warong Dechgitvigrom