PUBLISHED : 15 Nov 2023 at 05:28
Jurin Laksanawisit has resigned as acting leader of the Democrat Party following a misprint in an essential financial document involving the party.
Acting Democrat spokesman Ramet Rattanachaweng said on Tuesday the Fund for Development of Political Parties, which keeps records of taxpayers donating small sums of their income tax to a political party, sent a document to the party mistakenly calling the acting Democrat leader Narapat Kaewthong instead of Mr Jurin. Mr Narapat is a deputy party leader.
Mr Ramet said the party’s legal team wrote back to the fund requesting a rectification. The fund obliged, and the mistake has since been corrected with Mr Narapat’s name dropped as acting leader.
The spokesman said the fund might have misunderstood that the party leadership in an acting capacity had automatically gone to Mr Narapat, the most senior deputy leader. However, this was not the case since the party meeting earlier voted to install Mr Jurin as acting leader shortly after he stepped down as leader.
On Tuesday, Mr Jurin quit as acting leader, prompting the party to convene a meeting to elect a new acting leader.
The Democrat Party has been left without a full-time leader due to internal strife over who should take over. The majority of party MPs are reportedly backing Mr Narapat to succeed Mr Jurin, although some factions oppose his rise to the top job and staged walk-outs during two previous meetings to elect Mr Jurin’s replacement, forcing the sessions to be adjourned.
Mr Narapat said on Tuesday that he was ready to be nominated for the party leaderhip.
Meanwhile, Mr Jurin declined to say if his resignation as acting leader had anything to do with the misprint.
However, in a message to the party executive board, he explained that he stepped down this time to pave the way for a third meeting to select a new party leader.
He said while he remained in the acting leader role, he had strictly complied with the party regulations.