<p>This month, Thai television station Channel Seven — with ample members of the military in attendance — held <a href="https://prachatai.com/journal/2017/06/71912">a press conference</a> announcing a new military-themed series named ‘Love Missions’. The show marks the military’s most explicit intervention in the country’s soap opera or lakorn industry yet.</p> <p></p>

<p><em>The conservative establishment’s nigh decade-long putsch to turn back the progress of Thai democracy and the empowering advances it has made since late in the last century has backfired on them with epic irony. Their illiberal acts have been designed to demolish popular electoral democracy and return the nation to a state of corrupt and ineffective government open to easy exploitation by the traditional elite.</em></p>

<p><em>This article deals primarily with the sacrosanct relationship between the electoral process and democracy, and how the PDRC’s attempt to seize power without the electoral mandate that is required by democracy will lead the country into civil war.</em></p> <p>When the PDRC claimed they were staging a “shutdown” in Bangkok, few anticipated this would also include a shutdown on any meaningful dialogue or conversation, but there you have it (and you can’t say they didn’t warn you in advance).</p>