Opinion | A Military Dictatorship Like No Other

King Vajiralongkorn also radically changed the composition of the Privy Council. And he has obtained amendments to both the Sangha Act, which governs the Buddhist monastic order, and the law that governs the Crown Property Bureau, the body that manages the royal family’s huge wealth. All of these changes have strengthened his authority.

Mr. Prayuth faces other challenges as well. Last month, King Vajiralongkorn named Gen. Apirat Kongsompong, a member of his personal guard, to the Crown Property Bureau — this, after having already appointed General Apirat as the new army chief, even though such promotions traditionally are the preserve of the military. King Vajiralongkorn also delayed signing the junta’s decree announcing the March election, publicly putting the generals in an uncertain and awkward position in the meantime.

Perhaps more significant, he has deprived the military of one of its main tools of repression: Thailand’s extremely severe lèse-majesté law. The junta had been using it — in military courts operating under its control — to prosecute political opponents. But the king instructed the army to stop, and no new case appears to have been filed in 2018.

With these moves, King Vajiralongkorn isn’t just putting in place his own version of his late father’s system of rule — what some academics have called the “network monarchy”: an alliance of royalists, senior bureaucrats and business people loyal to the king. He is entrenching, through long-lasting legal changes, a deep monarchical state.

The implications for the upcoming election are plain. The other pro-Shinawatra party on the scene, Pheu Thai, has won every election since 2001 and it may well win again in March (despite deciding not to field candidates who would compete with its ally Thai Raksa Chat — whose own chances now seem slim after Ms. Ubolratana’s attempted candidacy). But even if Pheu Thai then manages to form a government — with or without other, minor, parties — its fortunes will be in the hands of various oversight bodies dominated by the military.

The Constitution empowers the National Strategy Committee, which oversees a 20-year strategic development plan, to challenge any government that fails to comply with the plan’s objectives. The constitutional court can also dismiss any government, as well as dissolve any political party, for even minor regulatory breaches: In 2008, it removed from office a popular prime minister for hosting cooking shows on television, deeming that petty payments he received in compensation violated a rule against cultivating extracurricular business interests.

And there can always be a coup. The king’s new army chief, a key player in the 2014 overthrow, hasn’t excluded the possibility of another military takeover in the case of unrest — read: should that be necessary to protect the monarch. In the past, the Shinawatras have seemed too popular, and perhaps too effective at delivering some public services.

And so it is that on the eve of a long-awaited election, Thailand’s curious political system — the military tutelage of civilian politics, but under royal command — seems more entrenched than ever.

Eugénie Mérieau is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen, in Germany, and a former consultant for the Thai program of the International Commission of Jurists.

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