After shutting down red-shirt referendum watch centres, the junta has established its own nationwide system for the sake of a supposedly ‘peaceful, clean, fair, independent, and unbiased’ referendum while a red shirt leader said the junta’s centres were aimed at dictating the referendum result. 

 

On Sunday, 3 July 2016, Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd, the junta spokesperson, said that the NCPO had launched ‘Peace and Order Centres’ across the country on 1 July, aimed at helping the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) facilitate the August charter draft referendum by strictly enforcing the Referendum Act and the Public Assembly Act, Matichon Online reported [1].  

 

Sansern claimed that the Centres will help prevent public disorder and create a supposedly ‘peaceful, clean, fair, independent, and unbiased’ referendum. The spokesperson also urged the public to help monitor the referendum by reporting referendum fraud to their local Centres. The Centres will operate in every province and district across the country.

 

Following the announcement, Nattawut Saikua, a leader of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), aka the red-shirt movement, told the media that the junta has duplicated the red-shirt nationwide referendum watch campaign despite the fact that the junta forced the red shirts to abandon a couple weeks ago, Matichon Online reported [2].

 

According to Matichon Online, Nattawut assumed that the centres are the junta’s attempt to dictate the referendum result since the junta gauged that the majority of people are still against the draft constitution.