THE GOVERNMENT yesterday rejected criticism that it has made no progress in keeping the coup-makers’ promise to reform the country two years after they seized power.

Prime Minister’s Office Minister Suwaphan Tanyuvardhana said yesterday that the post-coup government was implementing reforms in different areas, such as reducing inequality, although its priorities may differ from those of political parties or politicians.

“Contrary to what critics say, the reform has not failed. In fact, progress has been made continuously,” Suwaphan said. “We try to stop the practice of making gains from state projects. We make it easier to access the justice process. There is nothing that the NCPO [National Council for Peace and Order] and this government ignore.”

On May 22, 2014, the NCPO seized power from a government led by the Pheu Thai Party.

Suwaphan said that by listening to opinions from different groups, people should decide for themselves who sincerely had good intentions towards the country and who had a hidden political agenda.

He said politicians saying that the current stability and peaceful conditions in Thailand were “not real” was a pity because they thought peace after the coup was only temporary.

“It sounded as if some people want Thailand to not have peace again,” he said, adding that many people he met told him that a peaceful society was what they desired most.

The minister said there had not been one forced disappearance under the tenure of the post-coup government. “But we are enforcing the law straightforwardly,” he added.

Pheu Thai has said the post-coup administration had failed to solve the problems coup-makers cited as the reason for seizing power.

The party said people in power had been unable to end the political conflict, attain social reconciliation or create a sustainable democracy even after the second anniversary of the coup.

“The country has been at the lowest point in its history,” Pheu Thai said in a statement released yesterday. “There has been increased opposition from the international community and continued dissatisfaction from public members, business people and academics.”

The party called on the junta to restore “international democracy” as soon as possible.

The NCPO said that over the past two years it had focused mainly on serving the public although it had rarely advertised what it had done.

Colonel Piyapong Klinphan, a spokesman for the NCPO, maintained that the 2017 schedule for the next general election would remain unchanged, in accordance with the original reform roadmap.

In response to concerns that the NCPO may be in power for at least another five years, the spokesman said: “It is possible.”

He added that the NCPO would keep all its promises made to the public.