Poll agency gives parties radio, TV time to tout ‘achievements’
Twenty five political parties will receive radio and television airtime to publicise their achievements between Dec 16-20, Election Commission secretary-general Jarungvith Phumma said.
He was speaking yesterday after a meeting with executives from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission and staterun television and radio stations to discuss the allotment of airtime for parties whose members were elected as MPs.
This is in compliance with Section 86 of the constitution’s organic law on political parties.
The section stipulates that the EC must allot free airtime for parties once a year. The amount of airtime a party receives depends on the number of MPs it has. The meeting agreed that 25 parties will be given airtime from 7am to 10pm between Dec 16-20.
Of the 25 parties, 22 have no more than 70 MPs and they will receive no more than 10 minutes’ airtime each. The remaining three which have more than 70 MPs will be given no more than 20 minutes each.
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam yesterday said that 19 cabinet ministers, who are also MPs, can vote on the 2020 fiscal budget bill. He said that the current constitution does not bar them from doing so.
The bill will be tabled before the House of Representatives for its first reading on Oct 17, which would involve
a debate of two or three days. The second and third readings are likely to take place in January.
On Monday, the cabinet set up a 63-member panel which will vet the bill in its second reading. The panel will be made up of 15 representatives from the cabinet, 24 from the opposition parties and another 24 from coalition parties.
Mr Wissanu said the main cabinet representatives will be the finance and deputy finance ministers and the permanent secretary for finance.
The government has earmarked a
3.22-trillion-baht budget for the 2020 fiscal year, with a 489-billion-baht deficit, to run from January instead of Oct 1, which marks the start of the fiscal year.
The government has said it has enough funds from this month until January to cover expenditure until the new budget kicks in.
For the three-months before the 2020 budget disbursements, the government would be paying for salaries and fixed costs based on allocations in the 2019 budget, and it had enough money to do so, according to the Budget Bureau.