Article 112 Sidelined in the Upcoming Elections
Founder of 112WATCH, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, was interviewed by TIME on the issue of Article 112 and the upcoming elections in Thailand, to be held on 8 February 2026. The article is titled, “How the Biggest Issue of Thailand’s Last Election Got Sidelined in its Latest,” published on 6 February 2026. Some of his views can be found below.
February 7, 2026
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.”
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.” 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.”
“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.”
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.”
Read the full article here: https://time.com/7372530/thailand-election-lese-majeste-article-112-peoples-party-lookkate-bhumjaithai/
