Bangkok Pundit has a recent post suggesting that the grand old man of political maneuvering for the palace-military alliance may be sulking as he feels he’s being pushed aside. General Prem Tinsulanonda, president of the Privy Council, has had a major say in politics and especially on military promotions for five decades.
We are not sure if the old man is sulking or is aged, sick and weak, a bit like his junior, the king. He’s 94 and the last time we saw him, he was frail and not quite making sense. Senility? Illness? Both? Whatever it is, he’s being replaced by a generation of military men who are 30 years younger and “battle-hardened” from their murderous attacks on red shirts.
These are the generals who will take over the management of the royalist elite’s bigger decisions: General Prawit Wongsuwan, General Anupong Paojinda and General Prayuth Chan-ocha. These mean are more or less from the same generation and have pretty good relations. They are determined royalists with long-term palace relationships.
Some might think that the transition represents a major change. We are not so sure. We think the rejigging has been underway for some time and will probably see them reporting to their old boss General Surayud Chulanont in the Privy Council. The Privy Council is full of very old men and we don’t foresee any major changes there unless Prem dies before the king.
What is clear is that the military dictatorship is Prem-oriented and is unlikely to need to clash with him. The links to Prem and his style in government have been clear for some time since the coup. 
As if to emphasize this, Prayuth has just paraded before the cameras dressed as Prem, as seen in the two pictures appended to this post. Prayuth has garbed himself in the shirt that Prem made famous when prime minister in the 1980s.
We think the omens are about Premocracy. Thai-style shirts inevitably mean Thai-style democracy.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 
[…] settling old scores. The “model” being used by The Dictator and his cabal of royalists harks back to the Prem era of unelected governments running a country where parliament was a relatively insignificant sideshow. We wrote of the return […]
[…] Anyone who follows Thailand’s post-coup politics, dominated by The Dictator and his military brass, knew that the task in “reform” is to change the rules of politics to ensure that electoral politics is made subservient to the royalist elite’s interests. That means making electoral politics far less significant. PPT has suggested that the path chosen is likely to restore a political imbalance something like that of the Prem Tinuslanonda era. […]