Bangkok, Oct. 10 (IANS): Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha on Tuesday announced that General Elections would be held in November 2018, more than four years after the army launched a coup in 2014.
General Prayuta, chief of the country’s military junta since then, said at a Cabinet meeting that the exact dates would be announced around June 2018, reports Efe news.
The announcement comes days after Prayut met with the US President Donald Trump and told him they would hold free and fair elections in 2018.
Thailand’s new law on political parties, one of the four essential organic laws required for holding general elections, came into effect on Sunday.
The other laws include those that will regulate the election commission, approved earlier this year after the new Constitution came into effect in April, and those regulating the upper and lower houses.
Since the coup on May 22, 2014, all parties in Thailand have been banned from political activities, and the authorities are yet to revoke the ban.
The Puea Thai Party, founded by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is currently living in exile in Dubai, is the main political party in Thailand and has won all legislative elections, including the last one in 2011, since 2001.
