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indicate he may have been present on january 6 in washington, d.c. at the capitol riots. that was one pro-trump supporters violently stormed the nation's capital in an attempt to overthrow the presidential election. again, the motive here is still unclear. the suspect is dead. >> the u.s. attorney general says he personally made the decision to search the home of former president donald trump. merrick garland confirmed fbi agent's have searched trump's florida estate monday. the u.n.'s nuclear watchdog says military action must stop immediately. russia and ukraine are blaming each other for the shelling of the plant, europe's largest atomic power complex. thousands of brazilians have taken part in nationwide rallies to show support for democratic institutions. it is in response to president bolsonaro's criticism of the country's electronic voting system.

there is concern he will not recognize the results of october's presidential election. fifa has given the green light to start this year's world cup a day earlier. qatar will feature the first match when they play ecuador on the 20th. the game will be the only fixture on the opening day. ok. inside story is coming up next. stay with us. ♪ mohammed: he seized power in a coup and later led the government, but thailand's prime minister is under growing pressure to step down. what if he does not? could that lead to further unrest? this is "inside story." ♪

hello and welcome to the program. i am mohammed jamjoom. thailand has seen political instability since is army chief to our in a kuwait years ago. he eventually became prime minister but has faced resistance from many thais who have them in -- you have been demanding change. many are calling on prayut chan-o-cha to resign. students held protested wednesday calling for reforms to the monarchy and the government's resignation. authorities have cracked down unemployment, imposing a nationwide ban on protests in 2014. but many have defied that ban in the years since, leading to hundreds of arrests. >> i think the government does not really care about the people. it is likely don't exist. it feels like we are being abandoned and left behind. that is why we have come out, to

voice our concerns and hopefully push for a new government that really cares about its people. >> i think change is inevitable. as the country moves forward, we must rely on our younger generation. these young people are smart. i have seen them since the beginning of the movement. >> i think the movement has been very successful. people have been talking about things that have happened for decades, issues swept under the rug. it is no longer a personal struggle, but the people's agenda. we have raised the ceiling. mohammed: as we mentioned, prayut chan-o-cha led a coup in 2014 that overthrew a democratically elected government. he then served as prime minister under a military administration until elections in 2019 when he was chosen to remain in power. opposition parties say the process was rigged. now the political party chan-o-cha overthrew is seeking a ruling on whether prayut's five years as head of the military junta should count

towards his eight year constitutional term limit. it is the latest attempt by opposition parties to reverse with acs an illegitimate seizure of power. nearly two thirds of thai voters appear to agree. a recent poll suggests they want prime minister prayut chan-o-cha to leave office this month. let's go ahead and bring in our guests all joining us from bangkok. jade donavanik. thitinan pongsudhirak. and sunai phasuk. a warm welcome to you all and thank you so much for joining us. thitinan, let me start with you. the ptp, the main opposition party, they are seeking a court ruling to try and end the prime minister's term sooner, by

august 23 i believe. can you explain this legal strategy and the case they are attempting to make in the constitutional court? thitinan: the constitution, we have an article in the constitution of 23017. -- of 2017. it basically imposes a term limit on any prime minister not to last in office more than eight years. at issue here is, how do you count eight years? i think the opposition party, the various people filing contain -- plans and petitions, they are trying to count from when he seized power in 2014 on august 24. so, on august 24 this year, this would be the time that he would have to leave office. there are different ways of counting when he began. his people are saying it should

be counted when the constitution was promulgated in july 2017, or when the election took place in 2019, when he took office then. so, different ways of counting the eight years. i think the prime minister, his popularity is at a low point and he has been around a long time. people want change. there is mounting pressure for him to step aside, step down for a clean slate so we can have elections. that is what we are hoping for, many people in thailand. but his supporters and his ruling party, they want him to last all the way to the next election, march 2023. so now the constitutional court is in the hot seat because it has to decide. and remember, the constitution accord has been deciding in favor of general prayut through the years. for example, in 2019, in july,

his cabinet sowre an incomplete oath of office, but they got away with it. the constitutional court basically said they had no jurisdiction, even though they had to deal with issues of the constitution. then there were other cases are pretty much a general prayut found his way through the anticorruption commission. there is no way to doubt that the constitutional court will decide the same way. however, public pressure is mounting. so the judges will be under a lot of pressure to be impartial. mohammed: jade, the fact that there are different entities on the political scene in thailand that are counting how many years the prime minister has been in office differently, and it gets a little confusing. you have some supporters arguing his premiership began in 2017,

which would mean he would stay in power until 2025. others say it began after the 2019 election, which would mean he will could stay in theory in power until 2027. jade: thitinan was pointing out there is an article under the constitution, article 158, that terms the prime minister no more than eight years. there is another article, 264, which says the cabinet in office prior to coming into force of constitution, the cabinet prior to the constitution is the cabinet under the constitution. that means the cabinet ever since prior to the effective date of the constitution is also the cabinet under the constitution of 2017. so, who is within the cabinet? the prime minister, general

prayut, as well as the other ministers. for general prayut, it has to be counted from 24th of august, 2014, on all the way until this year, august 23. then that is the correct term as i see, counting under the terms of article 158 and article 264. many people were counting that it starts 2017 because they said the constitution came in april 2017 and therefore it has to be counted on that date many others count it after election. when he was appointed by his majesty the king around june 2019. but for me, the correct interpretation is we have to

bundle article 158 with 264, therefore his term ends the night august 23 this year. mohammed: does the effort to remove prime minister from office have a lot of public support at this point? if he is not removed, what happens next? sunai: well, the sense of dissatisfaction has grown significantly due to poor performance. and let's not forget he has no legitimacy from the beginning because he overthrew a democratically elected government. he has no legitimacy from the beginning. now is a critical juncture in which his credentials are being questioned with constitutional rule, and this constitution a was drafted by prayut and his cronies.

so his foundation is crumbling upon his own doing. so, already that. this week there was a resumption of political rallies on the outskirts of bangkok university. and there seemed to be assumption already among pro-democracy protesters that they are hoping there will be a quick end to prayut term. it could come in less than a week from now if his term comes to an end on august 23. this is very soon. and now, democratic groups are not calling for a new street protest. what they are calling for is a free and fair election that will lead to landslide victory of

pro-democracy political parties, and that would lead to a transition of thailand back to democracy, undoing the legacy of prayut chan-o-cha and undoing -- so this seems to be the game plan of the pro-democracy movement in thailand at the moment. mohammed: jade just mentioned there were protests that happened in the past few days. there have been many youth-led protests against the prime minister. do you think we are going to see more going forward? thitinan: i think yes, we will definitely see more going forward. going forward means that in the months and years ahead. the reason we are continuing to have protests is because people are unhappy. people are unhappy because the political system is unjust,

unfair, and partial to the one side. basically, this controversy and crisis for prayut on this eight year term limit is ironic, because this provision was written not against him, it was not meant for him, it was meant for his exiled nemesis who was living abroad. it's meant to prevent any individual from dominating electoral -- electoral parties thailand. but the law in thailand now is about power. it is not about fairness and justice, it is about how to take power and hold power. i would not be surprised if the constitutional court decides again in general prayut's favorite despite jade's and mr. sunai's comments, that he lacks legitimacy, that this is a violation of the constitution. because the various dynamics and the powers that be are still behind prayut. that is why we are going to see more protests. younger people, they look at

their future and it has been taken hostage by the prayut-led regime and they want to do something about it. we saw that two years ago and we are going to continue to see it. mohammed: if anger continues to build and if the prime minister does not either step down or if the constitutional court rules in his favor that he can continue to serve, from your vantage point, does that mean we are looking at the possibility of widespread instability or turmoil? jade: yes. and you see, the demonstrators are not only calling on prayut to resign, they are calling in three prongs. they are calling for a traditional amendment, for general prayut to resign, and third, it's not quite stable for the country. that might cause turmoil again, because they are calling for reform of the monarchy. the constitutional amendment and the reform of the monarchy

doesn't have to do with general prayut. but because general prayut is not dealing with anything that would be fair and would be seen from the liberal one of you -- point of view as making something impartial and making something fair and equitable, so now he's dragging on and on. then the constitution will be hurt as well as the monarchy. so i think we may see that things will get worse and worse. and afterwards, if they still stay on, you have another issue about the electoral system that they are trying to drag the electoral system to the proportional system, then the parler system. no one knows what happens right now and what they want. people were saying that some parties are making agreement that ok, general prayut, can stay on, but they want a parallel system.

because when they hit onto the campaign, they will win drastically, they will win a one slide. so who knows what happens now. everything will be chaotic. mohammed: i want to ask you about another aspect of what is going on in thailand right now, just take a step back for a moment. in its 2022 will report, human rights watch said the thai government further clamped down on the pro-democracy movement. what is the overall situation in thailand right now when it comes to human rights? sunai: well, let's not forget that thailand is still under emergency decree enforced by general prayut. this emergency decree can be actuated to the extent that all forms of exercise of fundamental freedoms, simply association, can be totally banned. this information can also be banned, calling it

disinformation. he has a draconian view in his hand and he's been using that. that explains why we have hundreds and hundreds of youth behind bars being charged for expressing their opinions against the government. as jade just said, they have three demand. not only those three demands about prayut's resignation and reform, none of these demands of been met or responded. they are being punished for making such demands. so this is the situation of the overall human rights landscape that thailand has become a draconian, repressive society under general prayut -- under general prayut's rule. how long can people put up with this?

my answer is people will not tolerate this anymore. that is why they risk their lives to go to the street, they risk their future. and there is nothing to lose anymore. jade and thitinan talk about these youngsters are fighting for a better future, to reclaim their rights. this is why they are going to risk being put behind bars, they risk being beat up and shot by police, facing charges that could keep them behind bars for decades. this is the risk that these youngsters are taking. and they see that if now they are pinning their hope that prayut will be forestall -- forced out of office, there will be a new election. if these demands are not met, who knows what will happen next. mohammed: you talked a little about the former prime minister. i wanted to ask you about that, because you wrote a piece entitled, keeping democratic

institutions weak, in which you wrote about what happened to the former prime minister. one of the things you said is, the worst thing one can do in thai politics is to run for office and win by a landslide. what did you mean when you wrote that? thitinan: the locust of power, the way that power works and is exercised in thailand is not through popular mandate, fundamentally. so, you have elections, and as you know, we have had two military coups over the past three decades and two constitutions in the last 25 years. we have had dissolutions of major, big political parties. imagine in any country that the major political parties are dissolved, left and right, time and again. so basically this is a way of keeping democratic institutions, parliament, electric representatives, keeping them weak by dissolving the parties,

banning politicians. doing so allows the traditional institutions of military, bureaucracy, judiciary, the monarchy, to be strong. so basically it is not possible so far in thailand to have strong democratic institutions because traditional institutions will reassert themselves. we have seen this time and again over the last 25 years and we will probably see more of it. but there is a kind of reckoning i think is coming along, because new demographics, younger generations, they don't want to put up with this anymore. we have had the cold war, new monarchs. the previous monarch lasted for seven decades. now i think is kind of a new thailand that the old power centers are unwilling to recognize and accept, and therefore we have a lot of tension, confrontation, protests, and so far it has been suppressed and repressed. but in the longer term, it will

be very difficult to avoid and prevent this kind of reckoning from taking place. we can only hope that thailand will find some kind of compromise for a way forward. if you live -- if you listen to the message of these protesters, they want reform. they don't want revolution. this is a country of compromise, degrees of separation are small. if you can have some reform so that the various political players, the political balance is reached in a new fashion that is satisfactory to younger people, older people, all kinds of people, that is the way forward for thailand. mohammed: are there any indications, any signs of how the military is viewing all that is going on? jade: i think they are observing what is going on right now. but they will take action. let's say, if the election is had, then afterwards the

liberals got the majority of the lower house, that majority of the lower house might not bring their prime minister. you have to have also the vote from the senate. then if the conservatives put together with the sentate, then they win the liberal part. people come on the street, the demonstrator, there might be a riot, then the military would take action then, then maybe another coup. mohammed: you mentioned the elections, will the elections actually happen? it's expected they will happen in march of 2023. do you think that will be the case? jade: it might not be in march, because march will be the end of the term of parliament. around 60 days after the ending, 45 days, depending on whether or not the parliament is dissolved.

if the parliament is dissolved you have 60 days. if the parliament ends with the actual terms it will be 45 days. march 24 is the ending. counting from there, 45 days, they will be an election. then after that, the chaotic situation may be occurring. mohammed: sunai, are you getting any indications that cracks are emerging in the ruling coalition, and is there any chance the prime minister might step down? sunai: well, prayut, i think he's intending to stay on. first of all, he believes against all the facts, that he's the holder of national unity, which i totally disagree with. he's the cause of division, the cause of discontent. but he seems to think otherwise, and he thinks that he has to

stay on for the sake of the nation. but people think differently, of course. and another thing is thailand going to the -- meeting later this year. for prayut it' -- for prayut, it's something he wants to leave the hind ss personal legacy. he does not have any kind of credential in diplomacy to be the prime minister at the time of the apec meeting, hosting world leaders. so this is something he wants to achieve. so, he will ban everything on the decision on the constitutional court, which up until now, has been partial in making decisions in prayut's favor all along. so he is banking his hopes in that basket.

mohammed: sunai, we only have about one minute left. i want to ask you, from your perspective, do you think elections are going to be happening early next year? sunai: well, elections have to happen. put it this way, elections will have to happen. i don't think the military will dare to stage a coup. otherwise, they will face fierce resistance from the thai population. we're now having the fearless generation who have proven being bold, courageous, and taking to the streets over the past three years, and they will see something much bigger if the military dares to stage a coup, or someone dares to derail the next election. mohammed: all right. will we have run out of time so we have to leave the conversation there. thank you so much to all of our guests, jade donavanik, thitinan pongsudhirak, and sunai phasuk.

and thank you for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting aljazeera.com. and for further discussion, go to our facebook page. you can also join the conversation on twitter, @ajinsidestory. for me and the whole team here, bye for now. ♪

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