Matubhum Party leaders want to merge with Chartthai Pattana

Retired General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, currently leader of the minor Matubhum Party, said on Friday that he was waiting for the Election Commission (EC) to decide whether his party will be dissolved because it has not met the requirement for minimum membership. 
Nobody but the party leaders and executives of Matubhum confirmed their memberships when the confirmation was opened in April.
Sonthi on Friday said that after a clear EC decision, he would lead 15 Matubhum politicians to join Chartthai Pattana. Those politicians are residents of the deep South, he said.
“The main reason we come to work with Chartthai Pattana is that we like the party’s policy of creating reconciliation and its neutrality,” he said.
In September 2006, Sonthi, then serving as commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, led a coup that overthrew the government of Thaksin Shinawatra while the then prime minister was in the United States. Two years later Sonthi, a Muslim, set up Matubhum Party with the goal of representing the interests of the Muslim minority in the deep South. However, the party has won only a handful of MP seats in recent general elections.
Chartthai Pattana on Friday convened its first general assembly following the junta’s easing of political restrictions, at the Miracle Grand Convention Hotel.
The meeting voted to select Kanchana Silapa-archa, daughter of the party’s late former leader Banharn, as the new Chartthai Pattana leader.
Kanchana on Friday said the arrival of General Sonthi and other Matubhum politicians would help Chartthai Pattana expand its support base in the South. She added that Chartthai Pattana had traditionally been viewed as a party for people in the Central region.
When asked if Sonthi’s military background would help Chartthai Pattana “get closer” to the ruling junta, Kanchana said her party did not focus on that aspect.
Chartthai Pattana’s general assembly also elected the party’s veteran politician Prapat Pothasuthon as the new secretary general. 
Previously, Kanchana’s younger brother Varawut was expected to become the party leader, while another young party politician was touted as the new secretary general.
Kanchana disclosed on Friday that she was approached on short notice to become the new party leader. “I had little time to make the decision,” she said. The new party leader added that something similar had happened 23 years ago when her father asked her to contest an election for the first time in her home province of Suphan Buri.
She said the reason she was elected Chartthai Pattana’s new leader could be because party members viewed her as “a bridge between the older and younger generations” within the party.
“People once called my father Banharn a “political dragon”. As a child of the political dragon, I promise to work to the best of my ability,” she said.