Thai Elections Must be Held by May of Next Year, According to New Law

The Thai military junta recently passed a law mandating that elections be held by May of next year.

The law, posted in the Royal Gazette, also laid out how members of the parliament will be selected.

In the lower house, 500 lawmakers will be voted in through nationwide elections, while 250 senators in the upper house will be appointed.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha recently stated that elections will take place on February 24, but also said they could be postponed to a later date–as has happened over and over again since his regime took power through a coup in 2014.

The new government appears as if it will most likely be set up in a way to limit the powers of political parties while at the same time preserving much of the power of the current ruling junta.

Over the past years and still to this day, Prayuth and his regime have banned almost all political action and organization, which has made it nearly impossible to form a meaningful resistance.

On top of that, with just months before elections are being claimed to take place, political parties are still being barred from campaigning. But Prayuth has continued to allow himself and his allies to hit the campaign trail by arbitrarily ruling that the military are not politicians and thus are exempt from the policy.

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