The Economist has a short and sharp assessment of the military’s charter and the junta’s referendum:
Sunday’s constitutional referendum offers a choice between continued military rule and a regressive constitution that entrenches it until 2022. A slender carrot is that approval will mean an election (army-sponsored, of course) in 2017. The vote, like the generals’ other claims to democratic legitimacy, is a sham. Criticism of the charter carries a 10-year jail term; 100-plus nay-sayers have been jailed. The generals have run a mass propaganda campaign involving 700,000 henchmen. The 40m-odd voters must put their thumbprints on ballot papers; the count will lack independent monitors. Despite the climate of fear, the main opposition parties are recommending a “no” vote. Even that would not end the junta’s reign. The generals have an ace in the hole: the seemingly imminent death of the king, an event that will let them freeze Thailand’s political system for years to come.
That seems reasonably accurate to us.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 