As the end of absolute military rule nears, the junta is pumping out a series of public policies that will wreak havoc on the environment and intensify state violence against the forest poor.
In the past few months, the junta has given a green light to the Irrigation Department to build dams, reservoirs, water gates and a mega-canal that will destroy local ecological systems across the country.
When the locals cry foul, they immediately face state intimidation.
Sanitsuda Ekachai is former editorial pages editor, Bangkok Post.
One of the controversial projects involves the destruction of Wang Heeb, a pristine watershed forest in Nakhon Si Thammarat province. But with Wang Heeb's history of fighting against state logging concessions to save the lush forest, locals have vowed they won't let the government have the last say.
The forest authorities, meanwhile, remain silent on the destruction of Wang Heeb rainforests -- as they have always been with other state policies and projects that destroy the forests they're supposed to protect.
For their priority is clear -- maintaining a firm grip on central control and suppressing local forest management efforts which will dilute their power.
This is explicit in a new law in the making -- the National Park bill.
It's true, however, that the current forest and national park laws badly need to be amended.
For starters, the draconian treatment of people living in forests violates the constitution which recognises the rights of indigenous peoples and old communities that existed before the demarcation of national forests.
As a subordinate law, it must respect the charter. So instead of treating the forest dwellers as criminals subject to eviction, arrest and imprisonment, forest laws must change to respect the forest dwellers' community rights to stay in ancestral lands.
But the park bill, speedily approved by the junta and now being vetted by the junta-appointed National Legislative Assembly, further strengthens forest authorities' top-down power while making punishments much more severe.
By not recognising the existence of traditional and indigenous forest communities, the bill continues to challenge the constitution which accords traditional communities the rights to have a say over the management of local resources.
Unless revised by the vetting committee, which I doubt will happen, the bill, if it becomes law, will greenlight the eviction of anyone living in national parks.
That includes the indigenous peoples and old communities that existed long before the advent of state forest agencies. It doesn't matter if these communities have successfully protected their forests.
Currently, the maximum jail sentence is five years. In the national park bill, the minimum jail sentence is four years which can go up to 20. Parole is no longer possible.
In other words, raw power and unjust law win over natural rights and justice yet again.
Interestingly, the bill also allows national park authorities to keep most of the entrance fees from tourists and use it under a closed system without people's participation. What will this lack of transparency entail?
It's apparent that the irrigation and forest authorities knew they needed to get their controversial projects approved fast by the junta before democracy sets in.
Such a scandalous law and these megaprojects would never have been so easily passed under an elected government. This clearly shows how military dictatorship is bad for the environment. And small people.
The same can be said about the centralised officialdom.
Proponents of the junta love to chastise democracy and politicians for being corrupt. They are simply ignoring one of the biggest factors holding the country back -- the top-down, authoritarian, anti-people bureaucracy -- with the military at its apex.
Under this closed system, the autocratic officialdom has the power to single-handedly write laws and initiate environmentally destructive projects to serve their vested interests. More often than not, they are working hand in glove with big business to exploit natural resources. The affected people or concerned citizens are slammed as anti-development voices that need to be suppressed.
The latest top-down water management projects and the proposed national park law epitomise autocratic rule by the anti-people, anti-environment and pro-business officialdom.
Governments change hands, but the centralised officialdom stays. And its unjust law and mega-projects continue on to hurt nature and small people.
We must consider the mandarins' central power to write laws and rules to steal from people and nature a serious form of corruption.
Decentralisation can help fix this. But decentralisation cannot happen when the country is denied democracy. Paralysing administrative decentralisation is one of the first things the junta did after the coup.
To be fair, public frustrations with electoral politics are valid. Condemning electoral politics to justify dictatorship, however, is not only unfair, it's also wrong. Because dictatorship strengthens autocratic bureaucracy to steal from people and nature more easily.
For democracy is more than the ballot box game. To be effective, it needs a system of checks and balances. It requires state accountability, transparency and rule of law. All this is not happening because our society is deeply hierarchical and authoritarian -- the result of gross inequality which breeds the patronage system. Decentralisation is then necessary so people can counter exploitative state schemes.
Like electoral democracy, decentralisation is often scoffed at by the Bangkok elites as merely a direct money pipeline to spread corruption at the grassroots level. Such a broad generalisation shows how the privileged few look down on people in the provinces.
The fact is that corruption anywhere happens not because people are bad and greedy, but because they know they can get away with it due to lack of transparency, a culture of impunity and the power of money to bend the rules.
For decentralisation to work, there must be political will at the national level to tackle inequality, create a level playing field for an equal head start for all, and to institutionalise the merit system to dismantle the patronage system and cronyism.
Decentralisation wilts when corroded by the top-down bureaucracy which undercuts local initiatives while breeding corruption and cronyism.
Democracy and decentralisation cannot grow when structural oppression and inequality remain intact. Nor can justice emerge when double standards reign.
If we fail to tackle the autocratic bureaucracy that breeds inequality, there will be no end to the state schemes that destroy the environment and violate human rights. There will be no end to political oppression.
Unless we pave the way for a more open and egalitarian society, we have no chance to get out of the political black hole we are in now.