BANGKOK — Sunday marks one of the most important votes in Thailand’s history, yet there have been no political rallies, no independent campaigns and virtually no debates. The junta made sure of that.

“Yes” votes on a new constitution and an accompanying measure would keep the military government in control for several years and enshrine a watered-down democracy that gives much power to appointed rather than elected officials. More than 100 people who tried to campaign against the referendum on social media have been thrown in jail, and open criticism has been made punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

“The lack of open campaigning is effectively a one-sided campaign. The intention is to have campaigns for the constitution, not against the constitution, because a lot of credibility is on the line for the junta,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “But it also means it has boomeranged because the other side now has gathered some steam, and now we are seeing more anti-charter movement rising.”

The junta, which came to power in a May 2014 coup, claims the new constitution will usher in a new era of clean politics and stable democracy in a country chronically short of both in recent years, sometimes sliding into violent internal political conflict.

Critics of the draft constitution have a long list of objections.

Chief among them: For at least a five-year “transition” period, the Senate will be a 250-member body whose members would be appointed by the junta, and include the commanders of the army and other security services. A deadlock in the 500-member elected Lower House could trigger a combined session of lower and upper chambers that could select a prime minister who is not an elected member of Parliament.

Also, emergency decrees enacted by the junta without any parliamentary consent remain valid as law. So-called independent bodies, stacked with conservative appointees, would hold “disproportionately broad and unchecked powers” that hang like a Damocles sword over elected politicians, said the international human rights consortium FIDH and the Union for Civil Liberty in Thailand.

“The draft charter creates undemocratic institutions, weakens the power of future elected governments, and is likely to fuel political instability,” they said in a report.

Even if Thais vote “no” Sunday, the military will remain in control for the foreseeable future. Junta leader Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has promised to hold elections next year, without elaborating on how that would happen if voters reject the draft constitution.

“I have no intention of holding on to power. I always said that we will have an election in 2017. … We want the country to move forward and figure out ways to have stability for at least five years,” Prayuth said Friday.

“If I was a real dictator, I would have not allowed the referendum or promised to hold elections.”

Thitinan said a “no” vote “would be a setback to the credibility of the junta, certainly, but it’s not going to see the back of them. They have insisted to remain in power. A “no” vote will mean we start over.”

Thailand has endured 13 successful military coups and 11 attempted takeovers since it replaced absolute monarchy with a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

Leaders of the latest coup say political conflict had made the country ungovernable and that military rule was necessary to bring stability. It set up hand-picked committees to craft a charter that would enshrine its declared goal of reforming politics by eliminating corruption.

Norachit Sinhaseni, a member of Constitution Drafting Commission, said Thai people “feel there is a lot corruption going on, money is being wasted and a lot of it is going into the pockets of politicians. So what they want and what we are trying to do is have a cleaner government, have better politicians who view the interests of the people at heart.”

Some other observers believe the draft constitution has a different aim: to weaken allies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the central figure in a battle that has roiled Thai politics since 2006.

Thaksin’s political machine has easily won every national election since 2001, relying on the support of working-class and rural voters who benefited from the populist policies he implemented. Leading the other side is Thailand’s traditional ruling class, royalists unnerved by the political support Thaksin commands, especially as it contemplates its future. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, whose righteous rule has anchored the kingdom since 1946, is 88 and ailing.

The army ousted Thaksin in a 2006 coup, saying it needed to keep order after his so-called “yellow shirt” critics took to the streets, accusing him of abuse of power, corruption and disrespecting the king. He has lived abroad since 2008 to avoid prison for a corruption conviction that he says was politically motivated. The 2014 coup ousted his sister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was elected prime minister in 2011 but buffeted by protests sparked by legislation that would have pardoned Thaksin.

Thaksin, a telecoms billionaire, came to power by taking advantage of provisions in Thailand’s 1997 constitution, generally acknowledged as the most democratic in the country’s history. Crucially, that charter sought to stabilize the polity by curbing smaller parties that routinely sold their support to join ruling coalitions.

Those who brought Thaksin down now seek to weaken major political parties, which would ensure that real power stays in the hands of what is dubbed the permanent bureaucracy: the military, the courts and other unelected guardians of the conservative status quo.

Thitinan, the political scientist, said their premise is that elected politicians are the root of Thailand’s problems, so it is important to check their power.

The draft constitution would make it “very easy to disband parties, keep politicians in line, impeach politicians, and it will enforce a coalition government of weaker, smaller parties,” he said. “As a result, we will see power and authority shifted away from elected representatives to appointed agencies and individuals.”

Chaturon Chaisang, who served in the Cabinets of both Thaksin and Yingluck, told The Associated Press that his biggest objection is that “the draft charter will not allow Thai people to determine the future of this country.”

The referendum vote, he said, “will be meaningless, so the government after the election will not respond to the needs of the people and so there will be conflict in the future.”

Story: Grant Peck, Jerry Harmer

BANGKOK — Governors in every province were asked Thursday to counter rumors circulating among some Muslims that their faith will not be respected in the proposed constitution being put to referendum on Sunday.

In an urgent order issued and made public Thursday, the Interior Affairs Ministry said an audio clip is spreading “distorted” facts about the new charter, though a longtime Muslim politician said officials were overreacting.

Buddhist Scholar Warns Against Establishing National Religion

“Each province must inform its provincial Election Commission and Islamic Central Committee to jointly discuss the issue, arrange a solution and create understanding with the public for them to know the correct facts,” the order said.

It went on to suggest officials ask Muslim clerics to spread the “correct understanding” about the charter’s clause addressing freedom of religion, which gives Buddhism special status but falls short of establishing it as state religion.

The order left unsaid the specific accusations being spread online, other than saying the clip alleged the junta-backed constitution violates the principles of Islam.

Areepan Uttarasin, a former MP who represented his home province of Narathiwat back in the 1980s, said he’s heard the audio clip after someone forwarded it to him over the Line chat application.

According to Areepan the unidentified speaker said the new constitution would only protect Buddhism as a national religion and disenfranchise other minority religions. The clip was shorter than two minutes, the politician said.

“He didn’t exactly distort the constitution. He was merely putting his feelings into his speech. It’s like he was giving his own interpretation of the constitution,” said Areepan, who belonged to a Pan-Islam political bloc called the Wadah. “This constitution uses this kind of language, so people of other religions are upset. And Muslims feel like they aren’t accepted.”

Although the new charter draft, like its predecessors, guarantees freedom of religion, it confers privileged status to Buddhism.

While the previous 2007 constitution broadly instructed the state to “support and protect all religions,” the proposed one specifically calls for the state to spread the teachings of Buddhism. And not just Buddhism in general, but the pro-state Theravada sect only.

The state is further required to defend the sect from any “threats.”

Meanwhile freedom of religion now has a condition: A religion must not “pose a danger to the security of the state.”

Areepen said the state should not overreact to the clip because it’s the interpretation of just one person.

“The state is treating this as a big issue,” Areepen said. “I don’t want them to pay too much attention to this. This kind of issue, it happens. Each person interprets it their own way.”

Related stories:

Thai Army Mistook Islam Summer Courses for Terrorist Meeting

Muslims Slam Allegations of Plot to Destroy Buddhism

BKK Airport Apologizes for Searching Muslim Cleric’s Headwear

BANGKOK — Some critics remain skeptical of why the Election Commission will stop publicizing electronic returns Sunday evening after 95 percent of the votes have come in.

Concerned the military regime will follow its suppression of debate over the charter with outright manipulation of the polls, critics say the decision to withhold immediate release of 5 percent of the vote, creates, at a minimum, a bad appearance.

Read: How Referendum Sunday is Supposed to Go Down, Step-by-Step

“I am worried,” said Rangsiman Rome, a student leader of the New Democracy Movement. “If the results are unclear it could raise tensions in Thai society. If the Election Commission is slow, people will become tense and fear that rigging may have taken place.”

As some foreign rights groups are dismissing the referendum as hopelessly flawed, even neutral parties such as regional election monitor Pongsak Chanon said it makes no sense to place a cap on the results.

Pongsak, of the Asian Network for Free Elections, stressed that it sows doubts about whether the results will be manipulated.

“Why don’t they just release the count up to 100 percent, or as much as possible? The least we want to see is a full [unofficial] reporting so there won’t be any confusion,” Pongsak said.

Pongsak, whose group ANFREL will dispatch fewer than 10 observers Sunday, said he still doesn’t understand the necessity, even after listening to the rationale.

Days before the vote, Election Commissioner Somchai Srisuthiyakorn revealed that 5 percent of the vote would go unreported Sunday night, an unprecedented mechanism he explained as sparing the possibility of any significant discrepancies between the early electronic returns and the official results to be released by the commission up to three days later.

But given that the margin of victory or defeat may come down to a few percentage points, such discrepancies could prove critical.

For that reason, Somchai warned that the public must wait if the returns prove too close to call.

“If the result is a victory of not more than a million votes, then we’ll have to wait for official results. If it’s more than that, then there’s no need to wait,” Somchai said.

There are about 50.5 million eligible voters.

In reality, he said, he will be surprised to see more than 80 percent of the vote come in through the app, due to technical problems and his belief that about 5 percent of the 95,000 voting stations may lack phone signals.

Somchai has stressed election officials are above the fray and will not permit any regime interference.

The commission has been accused of taking sides before, most notably the last time it was tasked with staging a vote: the 2014 general election disrupted by anti-government protesters and later annulled.

Yingcheep Atchanont of the Internet Law Reform Dialogue, or iLaw, was more circumspect. He said it’s still better to have some rough idea of the outcome Sunday than nothing.

Read: We Took Top Concerns About Sunday’s Referendum to Elections Officials

“But if the official results turn out the opposite of the unofficial count, then they must be able to explain why,” Yingcheep said.

Rangsiman, the student pro-democracy activist, said measures should be taken to ensure that the unofficial votes filed from polling stations through the Rapid Report application are done transparently and in a way that can be independently verified.

Pongsak, the regional poll observer, also wondered the results keyed in through the app could be verifiably matched with the manually counted numbers.

However, a former election commissioner, Gothom Arya, was more sympathetic to the commission’s system. He said those worried something may go wrong should go out and monitor their neighborhood voting stations and take pictures of the posted results for possible random check at a later time.

He doesn’t believe there will be foul play through the app or the unofficial results to come out Sunday.

Somchai said cross-referencing polling station tallies with the Rapid Report results would be impossible, as the app does not publicly report things at the precinct level, only provincial.

‘Vote at the Barrel of a Gun ‘

With the referendum on the junta-backed charter draft three days away, two foreign groups since Wednesday have dismissed the whole process as undemocratic and not genuine.

Charles Santiago, chairman of rights group ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, issued a strongly worded statement Thursday morning.

“This is not a referendum in any genuine sense of the word. This is not a democratic process. It’s a forced vote at the barrel of a gun following a campaign in which the authorities have sought to actively thwart informed debate,” said Santiago, a Malaysian MP.

His peer from the Philippines, former congressman Walden Bello, also weighed in.

“The junta has failed to heed any requests for a fair and open debate and stubbornly ignored basic international standards for conducting this kind of referendum,” Bello wrote. “It seems that the Thai people are damned if they do and damned if they don’t approve this constitution. Gen.  Prayuth [Chan-ocha] and his council of elders clearly have no intention of willingly ceding their grip on power, and so they have provided the Thai people not with a clear choice, but a dangerous Catch-22.”

Meanwhile, the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and its Thai partner, the Union for Civil Liberty, issued a statement Wednesday saying there would be “zero credibility” to the results.

“The NCPO’s manipulation of the constitution drafting process is reflected in a document that legitimizes the influence of the military and unelected elites over Thailand’s political system,” wrote  federation President Karim Lahidji, referring to the junta known formally as the National Council for Peace and Order. “The NCPO’s heavy-handed actions in silencing criticism of the draft charter will result in the vote having zero credibility if the draft is approved.”

Related stories:
Somchai Regrets Taunting Gravity With Ballot Box Bravado
How Referendum Sunday is Supposed to Go Down, Step-by-Step
We Took Top Concerns About Sunday’s Referendum to Elections Officials