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