Prachatai reports on yet another Article 112 conviction. This one results from the spiteful royalism of Kanbongkot Mekhapraphatsakun, a member of the ultra-royalist group Peoples Centre to Protect the Monarchy.

Kanbongkot was previously recorded as having filed four lese majeste complaints but is up to at least six, including Shinawat Chankrajang, Weha Saenchonchanasuk, Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, Niraphorn Onkhao, and Benja Apan.

This time it is a 60 year-old man from Phuket named Phong (pseudonym).

A former yellow shirt, Phong had had several jobs, from being a driver and working at a local printer to working for a local newspaper. He has no family and lives alone after separating from his partner. He now works as a taxi driver.

His activism re-emerged with the student-led protests began in 2020, [and] he began showing support on social media, but said he did not say anything radical until the authorities began using violence against the protesters. Social media discussion of the monarchy sent him searching for further information.

On 26 June 2023 he was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison, suspended for 2 years, over several Facebook posts in 2021.

Phong was arrested at his home on 20 January 2022 on the usual menu of lese majeste and computer crimes for six Facebook posts allegedly about the monarchy made in October and...

We know that the military has spent a lot of time trying to make a polity that will reject real electoral democracy in Thailand by electing military-backed parties. Coups in 2006 and 2014 were about putting structures in place to defeat Thaksin Shinawata-affiliated parties. The military and its royalist supporters were late in seeing the rise of Move Forward, and are now relying on the provisions of the military juntas constitution to defeat the electoral outcome in May, while also supporting legal challenges against Move Forward.

Chambers

Paul Chambers has an op-ed at East Asia Forum that looks at some of the post-election rumors.

Some six weeks after the election, Move Forward is clearly struggling, as is it leader, and its path to government remains a minefield:

While it is conceivable, though unlikely, that Thailands entrenched monarchy and monarchised military would allow Move...

Prachatai updates a story that began in 2018 when mad monarchists, led by academic Chaiyan Chaiyaporn, of the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, who has proclaimed himself a defender of everything royal, who detected errors in a thesis by historian Nattaphol Chaiching.

Chaiyan decided the errors amounted to falsified information in the thesis. This led to a lawsuit filed against Nattaphol, his publisher, Same Sky Books, and the historians supervisor former Faculty of Political Science lecturer Kullada Kesboonchoo Mead.

The recent Prachatai post explains that the suit against Kullada has been dropped. Meanwhile, those against Nattaphol and Same Sky Books will continue.

The plaintiff is Mom Rajawongse Priyanandana Rangsit, a granddaughter of the Prince of Chai Nat, who is demanding 50 million baht in damages for two books she alleges contain misleading information about her grandfather, Prince Rangsit, damaging his reputation. The books are: Dream the Impossible Dream () and The Junta, the Lords, and the Eagle ( ).

Todays royalists view Nattaphols books and their wide popularity as a threat. Make no mistake, this is royalist vengeance seeking to maintain a royalist story about Rangsit who is known as one of the dri...