ABSTRACT
Thailand has adopted a highly centralised, authoritarian approach to respond to COVID-19 through the use of emergency law. The approach showed early success but that was not sustained. Into the second year of the pandemic, the government of Prayuth Chan-ocha made a series of mistakes about how to achieve economic recovery, the vaccination plan and protection for vulnerable groups. Cases rose exponentially. The state was influenced by its militarised mentality, ineffective bureaucracy and state-business conflict of interest in making public policies. Human rights were considered irrelevant to decision-making. By ignoring the constitutional guarantee of human rights, such as human dignity, equality and the rights to information and free expression, Thailand failed to calculate the true extent of the damage caused by COVID-19 to the economy and society. This led to an unnecessarily high death toll and growing economic inequality, despite Thailand’s world class health services. This failure in turn added fuel to simmering public dissatisfaction with Prayuth and threatened further social turbulence.
