Pannika Wanich, former spokeswoman for the Future Forward party, Move Forward’s forerunner, has been barred from returning to politics following the court’s decision to permanently revoke her ability to compete for election due to her social media posts about the monarchy.
The Supreme Court issued its judgment on Wednesday on the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) lawsuit charging Pannika of major ethical violations during her tenure as a Future Forward MP. The court determined that her eligibility to run for office was permanently revoked.
According to the court, Pannika’s Facebook posts demonstrated disrespect for the monarchy.
According to the court, she had the option of removing all of the photographs and messages from her post, but she decided not to, even though doing so would have averted the impacts of those images and messages.
Pannika, a key player in the Progressive Movement, was thus accused with breaking ethical standards in violation of Section 235 of the Constitution and other statutes.
Srisuwan Janya, Thailand’s serial litigator, wrote to NACC on June 11, 2019, demanding that it investigate Pannika’s Facebook posts because he considered the content may jeopardize the monarchy and constituted a severe ethical breach.
Later, on February 28, 2022, the NACC committee unanimously approved a resolution stating that Pannika Wanich had badly violated the MP’s code of ethics, perhaps leading to major misconceptions about the monarchy among the general public.
On December 5, Rama IX’s birthday, one of Pannika’s claimed posts wrote, “Birthday, so what?”
Pannika had previously been barred from running for political office for ten years due to the collapse of the Future Forward party.
From 2011 to 2017, she worked as a journalist for Voice TV before transitioning into politics and becoming a spokesman and MP for the Future Forward party.
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