The junta leader, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, said on his weekly televised address on July 4th that the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) was "considering the guideline of appropriate selection process [emphasis added] and may appoint the selection committee to replace both the Bangkok Metropolitan Council and [councils of] Provincial Administration [Oeganizations and other local governments whose term has expired or is expiring]" (Royal Thai Government, 2014b). Less than a week later, the NCPO issued two announcements I stipulating guidelines for the selection process (Rpyal Thai Government, 2014a). In essence, the announcements set up provincial selection committees comprising of number of bureaucrats, whose task is to select individuals to replace the expired local government council members and executive officers. According to the guideline, two third of a local government council members and executive officers. According to the guideline, two third of a local government council must be either active or retired bureaucrats (Royal Thai Government, 2014a).
The announcements are anything but a promising sign to decentralization proponents (e.g. Matchon, 2014; Prachathai, 2014a). Their main concern is that not the NCPO's decision will hinder the decentralizaion movements, but it will also undermine democracy at local. Some go even further arguing that the NCPO's decision could potentially lead to the reintroduction of the Monthon system-a local administrative system that imitated British Colonial rules-employed between 1897 and 1993 during the absolute monarchy regime.
The fact that the NCPO's is altering the local givernance
Structure by recentrealizing political power also serves as evidence of what some students of Thai politics would call the " tug-of-war brtween centralization and decentralization." If so' it is nothing new. The struggle for control has already lasted for more than a hundred years (Chrdchawarn, 2010; Wongsekiarttirat, 1999). But given the present situation, it seems that at this time, the odds are in the favor of centralization.