Chonthicha “Lookkate” Jangrew was nervous as she walked around a market in Chunphon, a southern province of Thailand that is politically conservative and royalist, in January campaigning for the progressive People’s Party.
Lookkate, a pro-democracy activist and member of parliament who was named one of TIME’s Next Generation Leaders in 2024, was used to sticking her neck out—and to being penalized for it. Prior to becoming a member of parliament after elections in 2023, she had been prosecuted in around 30 criminal cases on charges that human rights organizations call politically motivated. But since being charged and ultimately convicted in 2024 with Thailand’s lèse-majesté law, which bans speech deemed anti-monarchy, she has feared not only losing her freedom but losing amity with her fellow citizens.
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A food seller, a man in his 40s, gestured to Lookkate. He recognized her, but to her surprise, he wished her luck with the outcome of her case and gave her a hug.
Lookkate hopes there are others in Thailand who will back those sticking their neck out like her in the approaching Feb. 8 general election. But it’s a far different political landscape than the last general election in 2023 when Lookkate’s progressive Move Forward Party—the predecessor of the People’s Party—emerged the biggest winner only to be thwarted by establishment forces from forming the government. At the time, the party campaigned on amending the lèse-majesté law, energizing voters who had participated in or witnessed the sweeping 2020 and 2021 youth-led pro-democracy protests.
Now, there is no mention of lèse-majesté on the party’s platform or its social media.
At stake in the election is whether the government can revive Thailand’s faltering economy and restore public trust, especially after a tumultuous year marked by a powerful earthquake, massive floods, fatal building and construction crane collapses, border clashes with Cambodia, and political upheaval as Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul took office in September following the dismissal of Paetongtarn Shinawatra over ethical misconduct. But it will also determine whether the public gives its mandate to a conservative royalist coalition government led by Anutin’s Bhumjaithai Party or demonstrates that, even after years of the government and judiciary cracking down on dissent, many Thais still yearn for a new, more democratic direction.
Read More: ‘I Never Fail the People’: Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul Doesn’t Plan on Going Anywhere
“As Thais go to the polls this Sunday, at issue will be whether Thailand will break out from its pattern of political instability and economic underperformance over the past two decades,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, professor and senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, tells TIME. “The signs and signals suggest not, at least not for a while yet.”
For the Thai people, the stakes of the election are also “rooted in the survival of political hope,” says Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. “This election is a test of whether the parliamentary path remains a viable vehicle for change.”
‘The battleground for democracy’
The youth-led protests that erupted in 2020 were initially aimed at military-backed rule since the 2014 coup, but as the movement grew, protesters broadened their demands beyond elected politics to challenge the role of institutions long shielded from public criticism, including the monarchy.
“The three important pillars in Thai society are nation, religion, and king,” says Akarachai Chaimaneekarakate, advocacy lead at Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR). Of these, some believe the monarch is the most important. The lèse-majesté law, or Article 112, which carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison per charge, is meant to protect the royal family from insults, defamation, and threats, but rights groups say the law has been systematically wielded to quash political dissent.
Experts previously told TIME that Article 112 is more of a means to an end. It allows conservative members of Thailand’s parliament, judiciary, and military to easily target progressive lawmakers and activists, when their real gripe may be with broader proposed reforms, like ending military conscription and implementing a minimum wage.
Despite emerging as the highest vote-getter of Thailand’s 2023 general election, the Move Forward Party was unable to get the backing of the military-aligned Senate to lead the government. Instead, Pheu Thai, the second-placed party led by the politically influential Shinawatra family, partnered with conservative, royalist, and military-aligned parties to form a shaky governing coalition, leaving Move Forward to lead the opposition.
In August 2024, Thailand’s Constitutional Court ordered the dissolution of the Move Forward Party on the grounds that its campaign to reform the lèse-majesté law amounted to an attempt to overthrow the monarchy. The court’s decision also barred the party’s leaders and executives from holding political office or forming a new party for 10 years, effectively sidelining some of the most prominent opposition politicians from Thai politics, while what remained was reincarnated as the People’s Party. Move Forward’s predecessor, the Future Forward Party, was similarly forced to dissolve in 2020 after the Constitutional Court ruled that it had broken electoral rules.
Even in its successor form as the People’s Party, the movement has continued to be shadowed by legal cases tied to Article 112. Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission is considering a vote to indict 44 former Move Forward Party lawmakers, many of whom are now members of the People’s Party, over their prior support for amending the lèse-majesté law. The vote was postponed last month after the lawmakers formally filed requests for a fairness review.
Lookkate was charged under Article 112 in two cases: one for a speech she gave at a peaceful demonstration in September 2021, and the other for a Facebook post she made as part of pro-democracy group Free Youth’s “People’s Messages campaign” in November 2020, which included a letter she had written to then-King Rama X calling for reforms of the monarchy and the royal budget. Lookkate faces the prospect of more than four years in prison but for now remains free on bail while appealing the cases to the Supreme Court. Because she was granted bail, Lookkate has been able to retain her parliamentary seat. But if she is imprisoned, she will be disqualified from serving as a member of parliament under Thai law.
Lookkate is far from the only target under Article 112. Activists say that broad enforcement of lèse-majesté has ramped up since the youth-led pro-democracy protests in 2020, particularly under the current government. Between Nov. 19, 2020, and Sept. 1, 2025, 284 people, including 20 minors, have been charged under Article 112, according to TLHR. By the end of September, 12 were serving prison sentences, and 18 were still detained pending trial or appeal.
“The battleground for democracy a few years ago was on the street. People took to the streets, they protested, they made their demands clear to the establishment. Today, the battleground for democracy is in the courtroom,” says Akarachai. “People who took to the streets now find themselves in the courtroom, their fate in the hands of judges.”
TIME has reached out to the Thai Constitutional Court, Election Commission, and Attorney General’s Office for comment.
‘The lèse-majesté universe was expanding’
Last April, Paul Chambers was jammed into the back of what seemed like a cattle truck, along with around 50 other people who, like him, were handcuffed. Chambers, an American academic who had built a career and family in Thailand across 30 years, was told that he was being charged under Article 112. Chambers later learnt that the charge stemmed from an unpublished webinar blurb about Thai military reshuffles, not direct criticism of the monarchy.
The truck brought them from the Provincial Court to the Phitsanulok prison, where, one by one, the people were unloaded, their handcuffs removed, and their clothing stripped and changed into a uniform. Chambers was ushered into a concrete room that felt overcrowded and cramped. Each person was given a small towel to lie on, Chambers says, and when anyone needed the toilet, they would use a hole in the corner of the room.
When other prisoners asked him why he had been jailed, Chambers hesitated. He knew there might be nationalists and royalists in the prison and was afraid of being attacked. “Nobody likes someone accused of 112,” Chambers tells TIME.
Chambers was told he would spend five days there before being transferred to the general population, where the U.S. Embassy later said he could have been held for months. Thanks to pressure from his wife, the embassy, and his attorneys at TLHR, Chambers was transferred to another room on the second day, and late that night, he was released on bail and required to wear an ankle monitor.
On May 1, the charges against Chambers were dropped. But the consequences had nevertheless come swiftly: his visa was revoked, he was fired from his job at Naresuan University, and the police decided they disagreed with the regional prosecutor and would continue to pursue the case against him. Late in May, the Attorney General of Thailand dropped the charges, countermanding the police. Chambers rode in a van with his wife and an immigration police officer, followed by an immigration police car, to the airport, where the police returned him his passport and he boarded a flight back to the U.S.
TIME has reached out to the Phitsanulok Provincial Court and police for comment.
The case, Akarachai, the TLHR advocate, tells TIME, was “a signal that the lèse-majesté universe was expanding.”
Chambers’ attorneys at TLHR filed an administrative lawsuit on his behalf against the police commissioner of Thailand and the immigration police seeking 3.6 million baht in damages and to restore Chambers’ visa, as he wishes to return. Chambers’ wife is still in Thailand.
“I’m afraid to go back, and my wife is also afraid for me to go back,” Chambers said, especially after a recent resurgence in pro-military and pro-monarchy sentiment amid the armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia.
Pavin tells TIME that over the years, Article 112 has transitioned “from a criminal statute into a tool for permanent political erasure.”
Pavin has himself been charged with Article 112 and related charges. In 2014, after the military coup, Pavin refused to report for “attitude adjustment”—detention and interrogation without formal charge that critics have said the military used to “neutralize its critics and opponents”—after which the state issued an arrest warrant, revoked his passport, and accused him of violating the lèse-majesté law. In the years since, Pavin has lived in exile under the threat of further lèse-majesté prosecution over his continued criticism of the Thai monarchy and for his establishment of the “Royalist Marketplace” Facebook group in 2020, which served as a forum for openly discussing the monarchy.
“I am, in effect, banned from my own home—not for a procedural oversight, but for the ‘crime’ of providing academic and public analysis that challenges the institution’s sacred status,” Pavin, who is based in Japan, says. “The state no longer just seeks to punish dissent within its borders but aims to excommunicate critics entirely.”
In recent years, Akarachai says the scope of the law has broadened beyond criticisms of the royal family to include people who have criticized previous monarchs, the abstract institution of the monarchy, and even, like Lookkate, suggested reform to the institution. Among the hundreds who have been charged since 2020, one young activist was convicted for wearing a pink traditional dress that the court said mocked the Thai Queen, another was sentenced to 50 years in prison for sharing clips from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight and a BBC documentary about the Thai monarchy on Facebook, and still another was convicted for apparently mocking the king by wearing a crop top at a pro-democracy protest. On May 14, 2024, youth activist Netiporn “Bung” Sanesangkhom died in custody after a prolonged hunger strike, following months of pretrial detention on lèse-majesté charges.
According to TLHR, Article 112 is just one of a number of laws that are used in political prosecutions. Between July 2020 and October 2025, nearly 1,500 people were charged under the emergency decree which penalizes protest; 599 were charged with illegal assembly; 156 people were charged with sedition; more than 200 with the Computer Crimes Act; and 45 with contempt of court.
The prosecution of children has also become more prevalent, according to TLHR. At least 286 children were charged or prosecuted for their political participation between late 2020 and October 2025, including 20 children in 24 lèse-majesté cases. One child was convicted under the emergency decree for riding his bicycle to observe a protest at age 12, according to TLHR.
In July Thailand’s parliament rejected two amnesty proposals, including one from the People’s Party, that would have effectively wiped Article 112 cases, though in October, the House of Representatives passed a bill proposed by the ultra-conservative, nationalist United Thai Nation Party to provide amnesty to those under 18 who committed or were accused of offences related to political assembly or expression, although it had not become law before parliament was dissolved.
‘A vote against the nation’
As the general election soon approaches, polls indicate that it’s a race between Anutin’s Bhumjaithai, vying to remain in power, and the People’s Party.
Bhumjaithai has been buoyed by nationalist fervor of the Thai-Cambodia border clash, says Thitinan. It has also capitalized on its incumbency, including by promoting loyalists to bureaucratic positions overseeing grassroots constituencies and picking up on defections from smaller parties. And Bhumjaithai has palace backing, Thitinan adds.
Anutin has sought to portray the People’s Party as the party of lèse-majesté reform—a move that could both scupper potential support for the progressive party among the more royalist-minded and instil fears of further political instability, given that attempted lèse-majesté reform led to the dissolution of its predecessor. Anutin said in December that his party Bhumjaithai would never join hands with the People’s Party so long as it does not forsake the idea of amending the law. Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of the royalist Democrat Party, also said that he would not work with parties that advocate for divisive policies.
People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut has insisted that amending Section 112 will not be on his party’s campaign platform, which is focused on strengthening the rule of law. His party’s goal is only to “stand behind the people,” he said. Since the Constitutional Court ruled in January 2024 that political parties were prohibited from campaigning on the issue of Article 112, People’s Party leaders have largely left their once-most popular idea of amending Article 112 unmentioned.
In an interview with TIME, Anutin pointed to the People’s Party’s abandonment of its lèse-majesté campaign—which it was legally required to do—as proof that “demand to amend this law has significantly subsided.”
“Even political parties that previously sought to advance this issue have publicly stated that it is no longer part of their policy agenda,” he said.
The absence of Article 112 from its 2026 campaign could work against the People’s Party, wrote Eugene Mark, a researcher at the Singapore-based think tank ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, as “a party born of defiance against the conservative establishment now depends on pragmatism for survival.”
Still, says Pavin, Thailand’s political elites and establishment, which are coalescing around Anutin’s Bhumjaithai Party, are tying the People’s Party to Article 112, “framing the People’s Party’s reformist platform as a threat to national security” and “suggesting that any vote for reform is a vote against the nation itself.”
Thitinan, the Thai professor, says that while the People’s Party has been “unable to run on deep structural reforms the way Move Forward did in 2023,” it has nevertheless gained momentum through “its message of fighting corruption and reforming the economy to restore stronger growth.”
“The strong polling for the People’s Party—particularly among urban youth—signals a persistent, deep-seated appetite for structural change and a total rejection of military interference,” says Pavin. “However, the rise of Bhumjaithai in provincial heartlands reflects a parallel appetite for ‘stability’ and patronage.”
The popularity of Bhumjaithai may also suggest, Pavin adds, that a significant portion of voters have been persuaded that the People’s Party’s focus on institutional reform—including the memory of its previous incarnation’s campaigning around Article 112 in the previous election—is “too ‘risky’ or ‘radical’ during times of economic and border instability.”
‘Litmus test’
Lookkate is now running for a seat as part of the People’s Party’s leadership, instead of in her constituency. If she ends up in prison, the party can replace her with another member, which they would not be able to do if she were the representative of a constituency.
She says the party has had to be careful with their messaging and strategic in their campaign, advocating for broader judicial reform and a raft of progressive policies to address stark inequalities in the country.
Lookkate tells TIME the issues she’s heard most about from voters are household debt, rising costs-of-living, entrenched business monopolies, and scam centers along the country’s border that have gained international attention for forced labor and human trafficking.
“Some people are still concerned about lèse-majesté,” Lookkate says, but many are afraid to speak out.
This election will serve as a kind of “litmus test” for what the public wants, says Thitinan. For many young voters, the People’s Party “seems to be their one and only agency.” If the party can win more than the 151 out of 500 seats it did in 2023, that outcome “would suggest that the electorate want a different kind of Thailand than that of the past two decades,” he says.
But even if the People’s Party comes out on top with a plurality again, it will likely also once again face the challenge of forming a governing coalition with parties that may fear fallout with the establishment, says Thitinan. Meanwhile, second-place may be good enough for Bhumjaithai, which could more easily form a coalition with Pheu Thai, another party that favors short-term populist spending over long-term economic reform.
It’s why the People’s Party is aiming for an outright majority. “We must not accept this anymore,” Move Forward’s former Prime Minister candidate Pita Limjaroenrat, who was barred from electoral politics from 10 years, said at a People’s Party rally in Bangkok on Jan. 25. “And the only way to do that is to win by a wide margin, to win big, and to keep winning for longer. We must win so decisively that the second-ranked party doesn’t dare form a government against us.”
But Thailand has gone nearly two decades without a single party winning an outright governing majority, and that’s unlikely to change, according to polls, which have the People’s Party leading in popularity but only at about 30%.
This election could be the decider between further entrenchment of Article 112 as “an unassailable pillar of the state” or the survival of conversation around reform, says Pavin. But regardless of the election’s outcome, the prospects of real reform of lèse-majesté will remain distant, he says, as “the real power over Article 112 resides with the ‘institutional gatekeepers’—the Constitutional Court and the Election Commission.”
It will almost certainly be too slow to make a difference in Lookkate’s case. In the meantime, she is savoring what could be her last few months of freedom.
Once a week, she visits her parents in her home province of Pathum Thani, a 40-minute drive from Bangkok, to slurp up her favorite of her mother and sister’s cooking: gaeng phed nor mai, beef and bamboo shoots simmered in a red coconut milk curry.
But most days, and often nights too, she keeps busy working—raising human rights issues during lengthy parliamentary sessions and committee inquiries, drafting motions and questions to ministers, and meeting with constituents.
Once, while campaigning in her constituency in Pathum Thani, a woman asked her if she would flee Thailand in order to avoid imprisonment.
“I never thought that my good will would lead to me having to count down until I have no freedom at all,” she said, but leaving Thailand isn’t a consideration. Instead, she said, “I have to work harder and harder and quicker and quicker to make sure that I do all I can for my country before I never have any chance to do it again.”
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