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By Prachatai |
<p>The Constitutional Court has accepted a petition asking it to rule whether Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha&rsquo;s time in office is up due to the 8-year maximum term limit for a Prime Minister imposed by the 2017 Constitution, and suspended him from office until a ruling is made.</p>
By Thammachart Kri-aksorn |
By Thammachart Kri-aksorn |
<p>Signs of a cabinet reshuffle show an attempt by the establishment to solve disputes within the government coalition. Facing a crisis of legitimacy, they also want to buy time.</p>
<div> <div>The number of signatories in an online campaign supporting the deputy junta head has dramatically decreased from almost 20,000 to 250 after Change.org detected the use of internet bots to boost numbers.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>On 5 February 2018, Warisara Sornpet, Director of Change.org Thailand, revealed to the media that the website had detected an attempt to manipulate an online campaign called “Supporting DPM Prawit for National Security and the 2018 World Cup.” The petition had received over 16,000 signatories but the number was reduced to about 250 after the bots, comp </div></div>
<div> <div>An anonymous graffiti artist has vanished after saying that the police are hunting him for painting a mural mocking the deputy junta head in public.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>The anonymous street artist-activist complained that security forces were persecuting him for expressing himself in a message posted to his Facebook page over the weekend.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>“To the police who sent officers to go to my acquaintances’ homes in the middle of the night, your methods are not quite the police’s way to do things … I only expressed my thoughts through art, the way it wor </div></div>
<div> <div>Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwan has claimed that the freshman cadet who recently died in a military academy was not beaten to death, but just too weak to withstand tough training.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>On 22 November, Prawit publicly disputed the claims of the parents of deceased cadet Phakhaphong Tanyakan that their son was beaten to death.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>“I affirm that the boy died from his own health [problems]. There was no beating or anything like that. </div></div>
<div> <div>According to a Deputy Prime Minister, the ruling junta is preparing to restore local elections, on condition that candidates do not criticise the junta in their campaigns</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>On 14 November 2017, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam stated that the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) is considering local elections in some areas. </div></div>