Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said he was just joking when he made the remark about using Section 44 of the interim charter to stop people from referring to the poor as rakya, which means grassroots.
"How could I actually do that? It was just my technique to prevent the audience from falling asleep," he said.
Gen Prayut said at an education seminar on Wednesday the poor should be called "low income" or "people with little education" instead. "I really want to reduce divisions in society but what I said about Section 44 was just to make people laugh," he said.