Pita outlines grassroots approach to developing election-winning policies
The Move Forward Party developed its election-winning policies from the grassroots up, its former leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, told a seminar in Chiang Mai on Friday.
The party’s 300 policies aimed to address social challenges by promoting democracy, improving social welfare, fostering decentralisation, enhancing agriculture and education, and protecting the environment, Pita said.
Raising the daily minimum wage to 450 baht, allowing elections for governors in all provinces, and cancelling mandatory military conscription were among the party’s campaign promises.
Decharut Sukkumnoed, a member of Move Forward’s advisory panel, said about 200 party members, including volunteers, were involved in developing policies. They spent up to 4,200 hours developing policies by speaking with people in person across the country, he said.
Move Forward MPs were effective in informing the public about their policies because they all underwent training to ensure that they truly understood them, he added.
Pita, who recently took over as president of Move Forward's advisory panel, said there were four steps involved in creating the policies.
The first step was to identify a problem or policy by talking to people and studying research. The second step was to formulate each policies’ details. The third step was to listen to the opinions of people affected by a policy, and the fourth was to launch a campaign promoting the policy.
Legal, financial and political implications of each policy were also taken into account before they were formulated, Pita said.
Move Forward startled Thailand’s political establishment by winning 151 seats in the House of Representatives. However, despite winning the most seats, it was prevented from forming a government.
