TEHRAN, Mar 07 - A court in Thailand on Thursday ordered the dissolution of a major political party ahead of this month's general election because it nominated a member of the royal family to be its candidate for prime minister.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The Constitutional Court also banned members of the Thai Raksa Chart Party's executive board from political activity for 10 years.
The ruling raised fresh questions about the fairness of the upcoming election, the first since a military coup toppled a democratically elected government in May 2014.
Thai Raksa Chart on Feb. 8 nominated Princess Ubolratana Mahidol as its candidate in the March 24 polls. Her brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, later that day issued a royal order calling the nomination highly inappropriate and unconstitutional.
Thai Raksa Chart is aligned with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose allied parties have won every national election since 2001 but have twice been toppled in coups. The latest election is being held under rules that are generally acknowledged as making it hard for pro-Thaksin parties to win a majority, and the dissolution of Thai Raksa Chart will make it all the more difficult.
The Constitutional Court is one of the most conservative institutions in Thailand and has consistently ruled against Thaksin and his allies.
Its statement explaining Thursday's ruling was even more critical of the party's action than the king had been. It appeared to ascribe ill intentions to the party's actions, blaming it for endangering a tradition that keeps the royal family above politics, even though Ubolratana embraced the nomination enthusiastically on her popular Instagram account.
As legal justification for the nomination, the party had pointed out that she held no formal royal titles because they were rescinded when she married a foreigner, an American, in 1972.
Source: AP
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