Development of Laws Regarding Political Parttes in the Kingdom of Thailand

Abstract

          The purpose of the research is to study the concepts, theories, factual issues, legal issues, court decisions, research, and legal measures of foreign countries and Thailand regarding the development of political party laws in order to propose guidelines for amending laws to be more effective.
          The research method is qualitative research, which is a study of documents, legal texts, academic texts, research, and electronic media of Thailand and abroad. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with 4 sample groups: political party groups, Election Commission groups, legal scholars, and Constitutional Court judges.

The study found that the Organic Act on Political Parties B.E. 2560 on the establishment of political parties, Section 9, stipulates that there must be 500 founders of a political party, which is too many and makes the establishment of a political party difficult. Therefore, it should be amended to reduce the number of founders to only 15. Regarding the examination of political party policies, Section 57 stipulates that political parties submit their policies to the Election Commission only. However, some political party policies require a large amount of money. Therefore, the law should be amended to require such policies to be submitted to the Ministry of Finance for further examination for feasibility. The termination of the political party status stipulated in Section 91 (1) regarding finding no less than 5,000 party members and increasing the number of members to not less than 10,000 within four years is too much. (4) The case of not calling a general meeting or not conducting political activities for 1 year may be difficult for small political parties. Therefore, the number of party member recruitment according to (1) should be cancelled and the period for political party meetings and activities should be extended by 2 years. The dissolution of a political party according to Section 92 stipulates too many grounds for dissolution. From a study of the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany and most civil law groups, only 2 grounds for dissolution of a political party are provided. Therefore, the grounds for dissolution of a political party in Thailand should be revised to only two: overthrowing the democratic regime with the King as Head of State and acting in a manner that is hostile to the democratic regime with the King as Head of State.