He added only 55% of the 50 million people eligible to vote had turned out and cast their ballots. About 200,000 police were to be deployed, but violence is seen as unlikely under a military government with a tight grip on security.
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The passage of the charter means the junta is more likely to stick to its current time line of holding elections late next year.
In addition to asking for an opinion on the constitution, the referendum also asked a supplementary question on whether voters wanted an appointed Senate to choose a prime minister. Under the constitution, which would be Thailand’s 20th since the military abolished an absolute monarchy in 1932, a junta-appointed Senate with seats reserved for military commanders would check the powers of elected lawmakers.
Thai officials immediately said that a democratically elected government will now take power in Thailand, at the earliest by December 2017.
The referendum result “demonstrates that the voters simply buy the discourse of the junta that Thailand needs the military to stabilise the country during the “transition period”, said Dr Prajak Kongkirati, a lecturer at Thammasat University’s faculty of political science.
Thailand has been divided for more than a decade between rival camps. There are many cases against Mr. Thaksin related to corruption waiting to be heard in the Thai courts.
But the family is loathed by an arch-royalist Bangkok elite which is backed by the military, and by southern voters who accuse the clan of corruption and populism.
The crackdown was an apparent attempt to hush anti-military activists and supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist leader whose younger sister Yingluck was leader of the government toppled in the 2014 military coup.
Since a 2006 coup, power in Thailand has flipped between elected governments led by or linked to self-exiled billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra and rule by the army and its establishment allies.
The junta itself, however, has used patriotic songs and television programs to woo support.
Rather than rejecting the constitution and the uncertainty that went with a no-vote, a significant majority of people chose to vote for the charter and with it a form of guided democracy for the immediate future. Jatuporn Prompan, the UDD chairman, said the referendum should not have been held under such conditions.
“If people cannot speak their minds freely or take part in political activities without fear, how can they meaningfully engage in this referendum”, said Josef Benedict, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
The junta, formally known as the National Council for Peace and Order, forbid debate about the constitution and banned campaigning ahead of the vote.
With about 82 percent of the votes counted from the referendum, two major media groups showed the “yes” vote winning a clear mandate.
Wirot Pao-in, acting head of the opposition Pheu Thai Party, said Thais may have voted for the constitution as a quick route to a military-backed election, which is expected to come by the end of next year. The new constitution was approved in a referendum on Sunday.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha arrives at a cabinet meeting at government house in Bangkok, Thailand August 9, 2016.
The new constitution sets the stage for a general election in 2017, which would be the country’s first since 2011.
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There is also no guarantee that the two opposing sides of Thai politics, the red shirts and the yellow shirts, are a single step closer to reconciliation.
