Gigantic roadside signs featuring Prawit, his party’s logo yet to be removed: Chonlanan

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN whether colossal vote-wooing signs spotted along the road in some provinces ostensibly featuring caretaker Prime Minister-cum-Palang Pracharath party leader Prawit Wongsuwan will ever be removed at any time from now, commented Pheu Thai party leader Chonlanan Srikaew today (Sept. 24).

Under the laws pertaining to a general election for MPs, any roadside billboards set up by any parties with intent to contest the nationwide race to parliament need to be removed during a 180-day period ahead of March 24, the final date on which a four-year term for the current House of Representatives is scheduled to end unless the House is dissolved in the meantime, thus necessitating the election to be held in a 60-day time, according to the Election Commission.

Chonlanan said those gigantic roadside signs featuring Prawit and his ruling party’s logo alongside the government’s economic and social measures for the impoverished people are evidently tantamount to an act of wooing votes from among those constituents in undue fashion, thus yet to be immediately and completely removed.

That referred to those huge billboards erected along the road in Nongbua Lamphu and Buengkarn where Prawit has officially visited to follow up on the government’s forest conservation and water resource development measures for the farmers.

Nevertheless, the rank and file of the largest coalition partner would invariably contend that those billboards only advertise the government’s measures albeit being displayed alongside the enlarged picture of the mask-wearing Prawit and the Palang Pracharath party logo.

Chonlanan said the Pheu Thai Party is obviously being taken undue advantage of whilst conducting electoral campaigns in the provinces since his party is not part of the Palang Pracharath-led coalition and does not enjoy the privileges of performing as government officials or carrying out the government’s measures for the people, especially those in the impoverished northeastern province.

Prawit’s camp have taken undue advantage by mingling their electoral campaigns with the government’s measures as displayed on those oversized billboards only to woo popular support from among the farmers and other constituents in the provinces, according to the Pheu Thai leader.

The Pheu Thai leader blamed some unnamed powers-that-be who may already have planned to deny the much-heralded probability of the largest opposition party scoring a “landslide” victory in the nationwide election.

Pheu Thai spiritual leader/former premier Thaksin Shinawatra originally forecast a “landslide” victory for the largest opposition party which he himself had founded, albeit under a different name, over two decades earlier.

CAPTIONS:

A new billboard with an image of caretaker Prime Minister-cum-Palang Pracharath party leader Prawit Wongsuwan that was put up in Buengkarn on Tuesday, Sept. 20, above, and a small sign attached beneath asking for legal leniency for using public land, below. Photos: Matichon

Front Page: Pheu Thai party leader Chonlanan Srikaew. Photo: Matichon