The Democrat Party had no malicious intent when it might have violated the Bt29 million funds paid by the Election Commission to subsidise the party's campaign billboards in the last general election, party's MP Charchai Issasenarak said on Thursday.
"It is unbelievable that the oldest political party may be punished by dissolution because it unintionally made smaller-than-specified billboards which were, in fact, harder for voters to see," he said.
In the party dissolution case under the Constitution Court review, the EC contends the main coalition party violated its financial rules relating to campaign billboards.
Under the rules, the billboards paid by political party subsidies must have the specified size of 2.40 meters by 1.4 meters.
Charnchai, who was in charge of his party's billboards, said it was a fact that the width of each billboard was 1.3 meters, or 10 centimeters short of the specifications.
He said the discrepancy in the billboard size was due to oversight since the party had not gained any financial benefits because there was no pricing difference for billboards with slightly differing width.
He said he hoped the high court would factor in his party's lack of motive to cheat when forming its verdict.
If found guilty of offence related to the party subsidies, the high court has the leeway to decide whether to dissolve the party and to ban party executives involved. The Democrats are not facing a mandatory dissolution nor a blanket ban of executives because the alleged offence is not about electoral fraud.