The seed-funding amount must be no less than the budget for an MP candidate to contest election in a constituency, the law stipulated. According to the Election Commission (EC) ’s latest requirement, the budget must be at least Bt1.5 million.

The amendment would be reflected in the second paragraph of Article 9 of the draft organic law on political parties, which on Thursday has been through the second and third readings by the NLA.

The Article initially written by the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) stipulated that new parties should have seed funding of no less than Bt1 million, with each party founder contributing Bt1,000 to Bt300,000.

The NLA’s legal vetting committee changed the CDC’s original clause – suggesting that the amount of seed funding be left open – during its scrutiny process following the passage of the law at the NLA’s first reading.

However, some NLA members, including Wallop Tang-kananurak, opposed the change proposed by the committee before it was passed by the NLA.

“Requiring a certain amount of seed funding could help prevent financiers from overshadowing political parties from backstage,” Wallop argued, but he wanted the ceiling to be lowered to Bt50,000.

Another NLA member, Somchai Sawangkarn, also agreed with Wallop, adding that parties choosing to not have seed funding should not be provided assistance from the EC’s political party development fund. They should also be prohibited from nominating MP candidates. “This is to ensure that parties truly want to participate in the political arena without a finance-based agenda,” he said.

General Somjet Boonthanom, who chaired the NLA committee vetting the political parties bill draft, said the committee had proposed not specifying the amount of seed funding to allow people with limited funding to participate in the political arena.

109 of 216 attending NLA members voted in favour of Wallop’s proposals.