The banned former leaders of Future Forward told Thai Enquirer this week that there were no legal hurdles to running candidates in local elections later this year that are part of its Progressive Movement group.
Former Future Forward spokeswoman Pannika Wanich said that as the Progressive Movement was not registered as a political party there would be no legal ramifications if the group used its platform to help local candidates.
“We don’t see any legal challenges,” she told Thai Enquirer.
Future Forward was dissolved earlier this year by Thailand’s Constitutional Court over grounds that it had illegally secured loans from party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. Thanathorn and the executive council were banned from politics for ten years as part of the decision and are not allowed to have any contacts with political parties.
“As we’re not a legal entity, we cannot break any law, we are just a movement focused on changing political culture,” said Kunthida Rungruengkiat, the Future Forward Party Deputy Leader.
“If the government wants to find a way to disqualify these candidates because of a connection to us, they will find a way to do it legally or not,” she told Thai Enquirer.
Screening concerns
According to Kunthida, the progressive movement said it will back some 4,000 candidates for local elections around the country. The candidates will be found through the movement’s grassroots projects and networks and espouse the ideas that Future Forward once stood for.
One of the major concerns that Kunthida had raised in the run-up to national elections for Future Forward was the lack of screening for candidates as the election timeline was shortened, giving the party little room to properly vet potential MPs.
This led to the defection of several MPs to other parties after Future Forward was dissolved.
With local elections set to happen later this year, Kunthida said that screening must be done carefully but even then “there are a lot of candidates.”
“The national election was for the first time for many of us and we were very new to the process, now we have networks in place and the qualities of our party are known so it should help,” she said.
Move Foward will not run local candidates
Though there is no political contact between the Progressive Movement and Future Forward’s successor party Move Foward, Move Forward have made it clear that they will not be running candidates in local elections.
Move Forward Party executive member and MP Padipat Santipada told Thai Enquirer in June that the party will not participate in local elections and instead will focus their initiatives in parliament.
