A 28-year-old man has been sentenced to prison for royal defamation over a 2021 post on X (formerly Twitter) about King Vajiralongkorn. He was later given a one-year suspended sentence on the grounds that he had never participated in any political protests.
Defamation of the king in Thailand can be something benign like saying you’d prefer to have an elected President.
As for it being a democracy, they have elections, but the military will stop a party from taking power if they don’t agree with them, like what happened last time.