THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

EC ready for pre-registration of new parties starting today

EC ready for pre-registration of new parties starting today

AFTER four years without elections or political party activities, the Election Commission (EC) is now ready to resume its responsibilities, beginning with the pre-registration of new political parties today.

This will be the first major political duty the EC will be discharging since the referendum on the draft constitution in August 2016.
The EC’s caretaker secretary-general, Pol Colonel Jarungwit Phumma, who also serves as the political party registrar, said he looked forward to welcoming founders of all new parties to the pre-registration starting at 7.30am today.
Jarungwit said he believed all aspiring parties would be able to complete all the procedures in time, especially after Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha’s latest announcement that the next election would take place “no later than” February next year. 

EC ready for pre-registration of new parties starting today

The pre-registration allows a group of 15 individuals to seek registration as a new political party. A number of EC officials have been deployed to facilitate the process at the agency’s head office, he said.
On Wednesday, the last working day before the pre-registration, officials at the EC headquarters worked on arranging a designated area to welcome founders of new parties today.
The pre-registration process abides by a controversial junta order issued in December that enables political parties to complete their administrative tasks and paperwork, aligned with the new organic law on political parties, while maintaining the junta ban on other political activities deemed a threat to peace and order.
At this stage, new parties are required to reserve the party name, logo and abbreviation, as well as submit relevant documents, Jarungwit said. 
“Then, the EC will examine the qualifications of the 15 founding members and check if the party name, both in Thai and English, as well as the abbreviation, coincide with that of any existing parties,” he said. “If everything is okay, we will issue the acceptance letter to the party so it can proceed to the next steps.”
Unless it fails to gather at least 500 members and raise a minimum of Bt1 million as capital within 180 days of receiving the acceptance letter, a group can register with the EC as a political party, the caretaker secretary-general said. While all these activities may seem complicated, Jarungwit said the EC had no concerns. 
He added that there was a clear procedure for new parties to begin the pre-registration today while existing parties will start from next month to deal with paperwork such as clearing up their registration records. 
Both the EC and political parties were involved in writing all these rules and there were not any major changes, only the qualifications were more stringent, he said.
“And we have already scheduled a meeting later this month, which we will prep them [existing political parties] with what they have to do. They have enough time to do it. There shouldn’t be any problem,” he said.
 

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