Using “loyalty” against Future Forward

Readers will no doubt recall that, prior to the junta’s “election,” there were a blizzard of complaints to the Election Commission regarding the Future Forward Party. The allegations included claims that Future Forward was insufficiently royal or even anti-monarchy.

At the time, we speculated that the junta’s polling, usually done by military agencies like ISOC, was showing that Future Forward was doing better than anyone had thought possible.

Now that it has done that well and has aligned in a possible coalition with pro-Thaksin Shinawatra parties, the dirty tricks deepen. The yellow social media campaign against Future Forward has been especially nasty and pervasive. It is almost as if the yellow lot hate Future Forward more than Puea Thai.

Thai PBS reports that Future Forward party secretary-general Piyabutr Saengkanokkul has been forced to defend “himself against allegations that he made comments hostile to the Thai Monarchy.”

Piyabutr said that the allegation stemmed from some “doctored” parts of an academic lecture on “Politics, Justice and Monarchy” back in February 2013.

He declares that the “allegedly hostile” were concocted and that “he had not mentioned the Thai Monarchy…”. Rather, he had:

talked about the principle of having a Constitution by explaining that, in accordance with the international democratic system, the Monarchy must be above and should not get involved in politics and that the position of the Monarch, which is inherited, must be in line with the democratic system.

Piyabutr made the obvious point “that his accusers … intended to engender hatred towards him.” Of course they do. That’s how the monarchy is used to oppose democrats and democracy.

Interestingly and bravely, Piyabutr explained how lese majeste has been used:

… over the past 14 years, charges of lèse majesté have been abused to cause social disunity and mutual hatred between people, providing excuses for the military to seize power.

He then made a statement that will confuse his opponents:

In a democracy, we can prefer different political parties or politicians.  We can compete politically within the rules without using the Monarchy to attack one another or cause hatred….

The confusion for the yellow opponents will be that they do not understand or want a democracy.

Piyabutr was responding because another of those manufactured “civil society” groups has complained to the Election Commission. Calling itself the “Political Civic Group,” the concocted group has petitioned the EC to dissolve Future Forward Party “for trying to subvert the monarchy.”

The self-declared “president” of the “group,” Surawat Sangkharoek, “submitted pictures and video clips of the party’s rallies to the EC as evidence to back up the group’s claim…”.

Surawat madly claimed that the “EC should acknowledge the FFP as a threat to national security and the monarchy…. The party is a den of anti-monarchists, whose members have used anti-monarchy rhetoric to instigate hatred against the revered institution…”.

We have an uncomfortable feeling that the EC might act against Future Forward in order to steal the election for Palang Pracharath, The Dictator and the junta.