Move Forward ban a lurch backward for Thailand

In a lurch backward for Thai democracy,  a court ruled today to dissolve the opposition Move Forward party for campaigning against a severe royal insult law, which the nine-judge panel ruled violated election laws and was tantamount to attempting to overthrow the constitutional monarchy.

The unanimous ruling will ban the party’s top executives from politics for a decade but will apparently allow its parliamentarians to reconstitute under a new party banner, likely the Thinkakhao Chaovilai Party. Sirikanya Tansakul, a Move Forward MP but not executive, is expected to lead the next incarnation of the party.

The highly anticipated and potentially explosive verdict brings down the top vote-getting party at last year’s general election, where it won 151 of 500 seats mainly on a vow to drive deep and wide monarchical, military and monopoly business reform if elected.

Most crucially, perhaps, it won 32 of 33 seats in Bangkok, the traditional epicenter of the kingdom’s political and economic power, and heart-of-the-nation ground zero for various color-coded protest movements that over the decades have pressed and at times successfully toppled perceived autocratic or corrupt governments.

Move Forward’s bid to form a government was denied by the then-military-appointed conservative Senate over its call on potential coalition members to sign an MOU making reform of the lese majeste law, known as Article 112, the government’s top agenda item.

Diplomatic sources say party leader and prime minister candidate Pita Limjaroenrat was quietly summoned to the palace on a late weekend evening and dissuaded from making 112 reform central to Move Forward’s agenda but the royal advice was apparently not heeded the following Monday. Whether that reputed sequence of events factored into today’s decision is unclear, the sources say.   

The 112 law, which shields the king, queen, heir and regent from any slight or criticism, allows for 15-year prison penalties for guilty verdicts. Move Forward says no fewer than 272 Thais, including 20 under the age of 18, have been charged with lese-majeste since 2020.

The second-ranking Peua Thai then parted ways with Move Forward to form a government with military-aligned and other conservative-leaning parties, a backroom deal that turned long-time foes into allies and brought coup-toppled and criminally convicted party patron Thaksin Shinawatra home under a royal pardon after 15 years in self-exile.

Today’s verdict reprised a January 31 ruling that interpreted Move Forward’s call to reform the less majeste law as borderline treasonous but only ordered the party to cease activities and pronouncements around the law. The Election Commission sought the party’s dissolution based on that earlier verdict.   

The bombshell ruling is consistent with court-ordered dissolutions of four previous political parties – some on corruption charges, others for electoral violations – which had dared to challenge the kingdom’s conservative elite with power-wielding bases in the bureaucracy, military and palace.   

Those included a 2020 court decision to dissolve Move Forward’s progenitor Future Forward party and ban its top executives, including original party founders Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, both of whom remain influential from behind the scenes while spearheading a progressive grassroots movement.

Crucially, today’s ruling marks the first time a court has banned a political party specifically for challenging royal power, pulling the monarchy into the political fray in an unprecedented way. King Vajiralongkorn did not comment on the case ahead of the ruling and called for national unity during a national birthday address last week.  

Move Forward leaders sent mixed messages about how the party may respond before it was banned. Pita said in an open letter last week that party leaders would eschew encouraging protests, fearing street chaos would endanger lives and give a pretext for a military coup.

Move Forward supporters gathered at the party’s headquarters rather than the Constitutional Court, apparently to avoid perceptions it was pressuring the court – as predecessors of the now-ruling Peua Thai party often did before major court decisions on party patron Thaksin Shinawatra.  

Pita said in his open letter that the party is locked in a “long-term contest” against conservative interests and that “Thailand’s path to greater democracy lies in peaceful transitions through credible elections.”

He said that even if he is banned and the party dissolved its next vehicle would contest provincial elections this year, municipal elections in 2025, the Bangkok gubernatorial race in 2026 and national elections in 2027.

That doesn’t mean, however, Move Forward’s legions of now disenfranchised supporters won’t seek to voice their discontent on Bangkok’s streets – with or without the party’s overt backing.

Future Forward supporters previously organized so-called “flash mobs” where supporters were only advised of protest sites via social media hours before the event to stay a step ahead of wrongfooted police and security forces.

That was when progressive protestors had a clear target in the military-aligned, ultra-royalist Prayut Chan-ocha government, which first came to power in a 2014 democracy-suspending coup and later in a 2019 election that barred criticizing the military on the campaign trail.

Significantly, Peua Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said before today’s court ruling that his government was not involved in the case against Move Forward. That’s likely true, though Peua Thai stands to gain politically with the dissolution of its upstart, more-youthful ally cum rival.

That raises the question of where potential orange-garbed pro-Move Forward protests, whether organically mounted or tacitly orchestrated, might gather and vent. The kingdom has arguably never seen political protests target royal palaces or symbols, but then never has the nation’s top vote-getter been banned for royal reasons.