The Thai Prime Minister was very unpopular before Covid began and in the past 18 months the disdain that people feel towards him and his administration has grown. There are a lot of people that speculate that any time a new "wave" of Covid results in lockdowns it is actually just a power grab on his part because protests against his rule were growing in number of attendees and frequency.
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My opinion about the man doesn't really matter because I can't vote and I am not Thai but I do know what I see around me from day-to-day and mostly the Thai people I know disapprove of the Prime Minister but are afraid to be very vocal about it.
When the protests against his rule were picking up in Bangkok, there was one other place that had mass protests as well that was of note and that was in the city of Chiang Mai, where I live.
The press isn't really free here and all of the major news outlets like The Bangkok Post and all of the news stations that I don't watch on TV because I don't speak Thai well enough to understand them, are all kind of well-known for being mouthpieces of whoever happens to be in the government at the time. They understand that any vocalization of dissent towards the ruling party would be seen as an assault and in the past these offices have simply been raided or the broadcast would be cut if it was something that was critical of the ruling party or the Royal Family.
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I remember I was once watching AL Jazeera on my satellite and a story about Thailand came up in English and before we could even get a glimpse of what they were going to talk about the above image came up on the screen and the Al Jazeera broadcast was interrupted by a group of people that were singing the praises of the government and of course the Royal Family. Certain UK news websites are still blocked by ISP's in this country because of some stories they did years ago about how the Prime Minister's re-election was mired in fraud.
A few days ago, Prime Minister Prayut announced that "fake news" is banned in the Kingdom from this point forward and that all Thai internet service providers are required to track the IP of all users for the sake of tracking down and arresting anyone who makes "fake news" and puts it online. ISP's who do not comply risk having their licenses revoked.
There are some very real problems with this notion and the main one being the fact that Prayut himself is the one who is going to be in charge of determining what is fake news and what isn't.
Thailand has a Constitution that is quite similar to other countries' document in that it provides for freedom of the press and freedom of expression. This would seem like a direct violation of that Constitution and the only reason why the order was passed through without approval of the rest of the government officials is because it falls under the Emergency Decree, Prayut does not need the approval of Parliament in order to make this decision on his own.
6 of the major media organizations immediately condemned the decree and I have to admire their courage in doing so since their words could very well be deemed "fake news" and they could find themselves with the police coming to visit them soon enough.
Basically this country is starting to look more and more like China in terms of information online being suppressed by a single person. The good news is that the government in Thailand is notoriously bad at anything technology-related just like almost every other government in the world. Thus far, their arrests have only resulted in Facebook users getting arrested who foolishly posted something online in their own real name. The scary thing about a few of those posts was that the government also went after anyone who "liked" the article or shared it.
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It is important to keep in mind that this man was not elected initially, he was a general that took power in a coup d'etat and later was re-elected in a vote that was loaded with really suspicious results including one province casting more votes for him than there were people that actually lived there.
He isn't going to go away quietly and hopefully he will give up power peacefully. In the meantime, it seems as though he is starting to not really be all that concerned with what people think of him when he makes one-sided decisions to eliminate all opinions other than the ones he approves.