Mayor Sonthaya Khunplome and his team will face one of their toughest opponents in this year’s city elections after the progressive Move Forward Party announced it plans to compete for mayor and city council.
Progressive movement leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit said Feb. 13 that the Move Forward plans to oust the present administration from power, claiming the incumbent mayor and his team have failed to solve Pattaya’s many problems despite holding power for decades.
No date has been announced for the election, although a budget has been set with the expectation polls will open in the first half of this year.
On a recent visit to Pattaya, Thanathorn said he listened to the problems of city residents, particularly about their chronic battle against flooding.
He Thanathorn said people are worried that Pattaya’s infrastructure has not kept pace with the city’s growth, leading to deficiencies in utilities, power and traffic management.
But the city’s economic collapse, due to policies of the current national and local government, have caused the most hardship, the progressive leader said.
But flooding remains the top complaint, with residents wondering what the successive administrations have spent all their tax money on, as the problem remains severe and causes repeated, expensive property damage.
Thanathorn said a city like Pattaya with a 2-billion-baht budget should be better than it is and that, under the Move Forward Party, it will.
This is not Move Forward’s first foray into local Chonburi politics and it has not gone well so far. Despite its popularity at the national level, particularly with Thailand’s younger generations, the progressive movement has failed to gain a foothold in local politics.
In December 2020’s provincial administrative organization elections, Move Forward, the successor to the disbanded Future Forward Party, suffered a crushing defeat across the 52 provinces where it fielded candidates for PAO presidents and council members.
The party ran more than 1,000 candidates but lost every one of its 42 races for PAO president and won only 55 seats in 18 provinces for provincial councils.
In November’s subdistrict-level polls, the progressives bounced back, winning 38 mayorships and council seats, but not in Nongprue Subdistrict, where a full slate was fielded.
Move Forward won 19.4 percent of the 196 races contested. The youngest new mayor elected was only 35 with the oldest just 53, a notable shift from the traditional geriatric nature of local politics.
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