The Thai junta has prohibited an anti-establishment red shirt group to organise a discussion on the 2015 Constitution Draft, saying that the group would propagate false information to malise the regime.   

According to the Thai News Agency, the Col Winthai Suvaree, the spokesperson of the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), said on Saturday morning, 5 September 2015, that the NCPO will not allow the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), a red shirt group, to organise a seminar on the the latest constitutional draft.

The junta’s spokesman said that the red shirt’s seminar would cause confusion to the public through the propagation of false information about the draft, which could affect the political road map of the government.

“Recently, [we] found that many members of the UDD expressed opinions on the media. Many times, [we] noticed that they were still trying to create political ideas to malise the NCPO in order to mislead people to perceive the government negatively in a manner which the information was not thoroughly presented,” said Winthai.

The decision of the National Reform Council (NRC) to vote for or against the charter draft tomorrow, 6 September 2015. is a pivot point on where Thai politics would turn.

At the end of the line, however, people are given two main choices whether to prolong the life of the Thai junta or to have an elected government by late 2016, which will be lorded over by the National Strategic Committee for Reform and Reconciliation or the ‘Crisis Panel’, a Thai style ‘Politburo’.

The transitory provision of the new charter states that the Crisis Panel has supreme power to ensure national security and stability if “there are needs to protect the integrity of the nation’s land and independence and to suppress threats to national security, the Thai monarchy, and economy or threats of violent conflicts of the nation with thin five years after the enactment of the constitution.”

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