Prayuth Chan-ocha; Thai: ประยุทธ์ จันทร์โอชา is a retired Royal Thai Army officer who is the head of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), a military junta, and concurrently serves as the Prime Minister of Thailand. The council has the power to name the prime minister and control prime ministerial positions.
Prayut is a former Commander in Chief of the Royal Thai Army, the post he held from October 2010 to October 2014. After his appointment as army chief, Prayut was characterised as a strong royalist and an opponent of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.Considered a hardliner within the military, he was one of the leading proponents of military crackdowns on the "Red Shirt" demonstrations of April 2009 and April–May 2010. He later sought to moderate his profile, talking to relatives of protesters who were killed in the bloody conflict, and co-operating with the government of Yingluck Shinawatra who won parliamentary election in July 2011.