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The move comes a day before Parliament votes on Pita Limjaroenrat’s candidacy to become Thailand’s next prime minister.
Thailand’s election commission has asked the country’s Constitutional Court to rule on whether the leader of the progressive party that won the most seats in a recent vote should be disqualified from parliament, media reports said.
The referral of the case against Pita Limjaroenrat, who heads the Advance Party, came on Wednesday, a day before the bicameral parliament is scheduled to vote on the 42-year-old businessman’s candidacy to become Thailand’s next prime minister.
Pita has the support of eight parties in an alliance that aims to form a new government.
The election commission’s move was reported by the Reuters news agency and three local media.
The body has been investigating whether Pita was knowingly ineligible to register as a candidate for Parliament because of his ownership of shares in a media company, which is prohibited by election rules.
Pita has played down the issue, arguing that shares in the firm, iTV, have since been transferred and that the company was not an active media organisation. He faces disqualification, up to 10 years in prison and a 20-year ban from politics if he is found to have broken the rules.
Move Forward, in a statement, accused the electoral commission of rushing the referral of the case and said Pita should have been given the opportunity to respond and refute the allegations.
Move Forward and another opposition party, Pheu Thai, defeated army-allied rivals in the May 14 election, in what was widely seen as a landslide rejection of nine years of led or supported government by the generals of the country.
The party’s anti-establishment agenda – which includes reducing the military’s political role, dismantling monopolies and overhauling a controversial law against insulting the monarchy – clashes with the interests of the royalist military and the old-money business elite which has influenced politics for decades in Southeast Asia. second largest economy.
Since then, Pita has faced multiple complaints from rivals, three of which the electoral commission dismissed for late filing. Four other allegations against his party have also been rejected.
