Veteran members ‘oppose’ Pheu Thai alliance
PUBLISHED : 1 Sep 2024 at 06:08
Ramate Rattanachaweng, a former spokesman for the Democrat Party, on Saturday hit back at Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra over remarks that she could never accept what some former Democrat executives had wrongfully done in the past against her party.
“Let me ask [her], has there been any former Democrat Party leader who was jailed for corruption?” he said. “Have any of them fled the country to dodge a corruption sentence?”
The prime minister was responding to frustrations vented by some political allies of the Pheu Thai Party, especially the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), towards Pheu Thai’s decision to form an alliance with the Democrat Party.
Ms Paetongtarn said that just because both parties have joined hands in the new coalition government, it doesn’t mean Pheu Thai could ever accept what the Democrats had done to Pheu Thai and its political allies in the past. She was apparently referring to the decision by a Democrat-led regime to use force to disperse political protesters, mostly UDD supporters, who took to the streets to protest after the Yingluck Shinawatra administration was ousted in a military coup on May 22, 2014.
Mr Ramate said Pheu Thai people liked to talk falsely about the role of Abhisit Vejjajiva, former Democrat leader and prime minister, in the violent dispersal of protesters back then, while in reality the gathering of those protesters wasn’t as peaceful and legal as claimed.
Ms Paetongtarn said the Democrat’s executive lineup has changed over the past decade, and the Pheu Thai-led government needs stability. The Democrat Party could help boost coalition ranks with its MPs, she said.
She also likened Pheu Thai’s decision to form an alliance with the Democrats to the decision of a country which resumed trading with another after the latter changed from a dictatorship to a democracy. “That’s a way of looking forward to a new future,” she said.
In response, Mr Ramate said that even though most Democrat executives approved the decision to join Pheu Thai as a coalition partner, many members, including former MPs and cabinet ministers, did not agree with the decision. “These supporters stay loyal to the party still because they have faith in the integrity and the goodness the party has maintained in the past,” he said.
Ramate: Notes party’s integrity