Thai opposition party targeted with misleading 'small rally crowd' claim

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 5, 2023 at 05:40
3 min read
By Chayanit ITTHIPONGMAETEE, AFP Thailand

A photo showing only around two dozen people at a political rally has been misleadingly shared in posts that mock Thailand's second largest opposition party for what appears to be a poorly attended event. But the photo -- which surfaced on social media weeks before Thai voters head to the polls -- only captures a snippet of a rally for the leftist Move Forward Party in southern Krabi province in April. Local police and multiple news reports say hundreds more people trickled in after the event was delayed by rain.

"Krabi people's eyes are open now! They do not want the anti-monarchy party," reads the Thai-language caption to the photo shared on Facebook on April 24, 2023.

It shows a handful of people using umbrellas and many empty chairs during what appears to be a campaign rally for the Move Forward Party, a left-leaning reformist movement.

Thailand goes to the polls on May 14 for the first election since the kingdom was rocked by major student-led pro-democracy protests in 2020 calling for political reform (archive link).

The election is shaping up as a clash between incumbent ruling parties, backed by Thailand's conservative military and royalist establishment, and more reformist and progressive opposition groups.

Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post, taken on April 27, 2023

Similar misleading posts have also been shared hundreds of times on social media. It was shared on Facebook here, by a page with more than 490,000 followers, and here, as well as on Twitter here and here.

But police in Krabi told AFP more people actually attended the rally than what the photo in the posts appear to show.

"I'd say it's more likely 200 people attended," said Colonel Sutthipak Komsakorn, chief of Khlong Tom Police Station, which is opposite to where the rally took place.

"It was raining that afternoon, so people showed up at the rally later in the evening after the rain stopped," Sutthipak said on May 2, 2023.

AFP reviewed a three-hour Facebook livestream of the rally posted by Suparerk Meelam, the Move Forward Party's candidate for Krabi province, and found the crowd started to grow in size (at the 1:45:15 minute mark) after the event was initially disrupted by rain (archived link).

Below are screenshots, taken from the livestream, showing the crowd who attended the rally:

Screenshots from the livestream showing the crowd who attended the rally

Moreover, a number of local media in Thailand such as Workpoint News, Matichon, Amarin TV and Thairath also published videos and photos displaying the crowd who attended the rally (archived links here, here, here and here).

Suparerk told AFP on May 1: "As the rally was about to happen, it started to rain heavily. We had to push the rally to start at around 4:30 instead."

"We initially prepared 150 chairs for the attendees. Later, as more people showed up, we added another 100 chairs. Given other people standing around, I would say it's about 350-400 people in total," Suparerk added.

AFP has previously debunked misinformation swirling around the Thai elections here and here (archived links here and here).

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail