The military regime has promised to bring unity and reconciliation back to society after the May 22 coup. But any reconciliation efforts have been significantly undermined by the regime's intensified campaign of centralisation and top-down administration.
There are growing concerns that the government's invocation of Section 44, which gives it enormous power, and rigid use of the lese majeste law - which often becomes a political tool to ruin one's enemies - may further widen the political divide.
This may explain why the commitment to the political roadmap by the Prayut Chan-o-cha administration and the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) does little to ease anxieties among some politicians and pro-democracy factions.
The Bangkok-based elites' adherence to the top-down administrative style means they have alienated themselves from the locals' calls for decentralisation. Indeed, how could national reform be a success without opening one's mind?
"If government officials, the cabinet, and the middle class still operate with a top-down mindset, we won't be able to embrace the differing aspirations of those people in the course of a less conflicted and more reconciliatory future," said Prof Duncan McCargo, from the University of Leeds' School of Politics and International Studies. He was speaking at "Thailand Forum 2015: Society in Transition" which took place recently at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
The professor, who co-authored the paper on "Exit, Voice, (Dis)Loyalty? - Northeast Thailand After the 2014 Coup" with Ubon Ratchathani University lecturer Saowanee T Alexander, said relations between Bangkok and other regions, especially the North and the Northeast, have been strained by structural and historical tensions for decades.
In the case of Isan, he said, Bangkok devalued the "Laoness" of the Northeast by re-grouping provinces and downgrading traditional rulers during the centralisation period. Old Siam also exerted central control by giving Siamese monks authority over their clergies in the North and Northeast. To consolidate central power, Bangkok also removed local elites and sent its men to rule the regions.
Today, the Bangkok elites can still suppress anti-coup activists, but resistance remains, Prof McCargo said. Suppressing 20 million people might be possible for a certain period of time, he said, but the rigid control, wrapped in the "bring back happiness" package, can't go on forever.
"When political conditions change, there will be a backlash sooner or later and its repercussions will be more difficult to manage," said the British scholar who has penned at least four books on Thailand in the past 15 years.
Calls for decentralisation from various parts of the country appeared to be the solution to appease brewing dissatisfaction in some regions. But the decentralisation process has been held back by the coup.
Local governments at the provincial and sub-district levels are the legacy of the 1992 Black May uprising when there were strong demands for decentralisation.
Centralised officialdom has been resistant all along, said Assoc Prof Achakorn Wongpreedee of the National Institute of Development Administration's Graduate School of Public Administration.
But it is the NCPO which eventually prohibited elections of local administrative bodies. Bangkok's city council was replaced with an appointed body under retired city clerk Kriangsak Lohachala. "It's an unfortunate backtrack," said Mr Achakorn.
Indeed, this move has disrupted the learning curve and development of local democracy.
Despite valid concerns over widespread corruption and mismanagement in local governments, the system needs to be fixed, not politically crippled or eliminated. Decentralisation and local democracy are the best solutions to these problems. Without them, the reform and reconciliation talk is meaningless.
Achara Ashayagachat is Senior News Reporter, Bangkok Post.