The protests against the current government, in particular Prime Minister Prayut, are still going strong in Bangkok despite the fact that these protests have been deemed unlawful and on multiple occasions the police attempted to disperse the crowd using non lethal armaments such as water cannons and tear gas.
Officially banning the gather of 5 or more people only increased the size of the crowds, and any other attempts to make gatherings difficult such as curfews have been met with complete resistance from the ever-growing crowd.
The people want the Prime Minister to resign, and this is nothing new in this country that I call home (for now.) When I talk to people that have lived here a long time they laugh a bit and say something along the lines of "yeah, they do this every 5-10 years." When General Prayut took office after a coup some years ago, they actually did hold "free and fair" elections that resulted in him and his party winning that election but of course this depends a lot on whether or not you believe that elections in a country like Thailand could every actually be fair. There are a lot of people that don't believe that it can be or that it was. Ironically, the United States was one of the harshest critics of the elections being rigged and it's kind of funny how things are working out back in the ol' US and A right now, isn't it?
The demands of the mobs in Thailand aren't just that the Prime Minister step down (which personally is something I think he should NOT do - wait for the next election and make your voice heard there and maybe try to ensure the results are legitimate this time.) But they also want the Royal Family, who is one of the richest families in the world, to stop using public funds for their lavish lifestyles. It's really easy to remain very very rich when you get to use public money to travel and have all of your properties built and maintained with someone else's money. I know that would be a huge load off my mind if I no longer had to be concerned with paying for my own life.
I can totally identify with this notion as far as the protestors are concerned.
For example: Thailand's only aircraft carrier has no aircraft and this is because, as they claim, they ran out of spare parts for the type of aircraft that this vessel was meant to accommodate. However, the interior was retrofitted with a luxurious interior "fit for a King" and of course they had plenty of spare parts for that. The vessel is referred to as the “The World’s Largest Royal Yacht.”
Of course the King no longer uses it - or at least that is what we are meant to believe, and if he ever did they were very covert about it. However, it isn't very difficult to read between the lines here: This vessel was never intended for military purposes nor has it ever been used in such a capacity. Public funds were used to make a $200 million party boat for the King.
The King really irritated the population when during the peak of Covid hysteria he almost immediately fled the country to Bavaria with an entourage of at least 20 "girlfriends" on the public dime. The entire hotel was booked to accommodate him and "Covid laws" in both Thailand and Germany were disregarded for this visit.
So while his people weren't even allowed to leave their neighborhoods, let alone travel abroad, the "Father of the People of Thailand" takes a harem to a distant country and the people of Thailand, who are mostly poor, got to pay for it. I can't imagine why that would piss anyone off, can you?
At the moment the government is trying to repress any news regarding what is really going on in the country and many people have been arrested for violating Lese Majeste laws that can land you in prison for 15 years for even mildly criticizing the King or other members of the Royal Family.
This only added more fuel to the fire and it appears now that the leaders who have been arrested will likely be released else the situation get even more out of hand.
What's going to happen next? Well, your guess is as good as mine. For the time being there are multiple rallies in support of the King but they are much smaller and a lot of them appear to be staged. I just hope they can manage to keep things non-violent but based on what I know about the happenings in the past, I wouldn't count on it.