The Democrat Old Guard Mounts a Comeback

Abhisit Vejjajiva returns as Democrat leader

Abhisit Vejjajiva at the Democrat Party convention. Image Credits: Democrat Party Thailand Facebook Page

Thailand’s Democrats have been in disarray for years. After spending most of the first twenty years of this century as one of the two largest parties, the Democrats have been in a state of constant decline since 2019. The 2023 general election had halved it seats. Partnering with Palang Pracharath and then Pheu Thai had left supporters unsure of what the party stood for. Its polling was dire. Byelection results in supposed strongholds were catastrophic. Thailand’s oldest political party looked like it had finally entered a state of terminal decline. Or, at the very least, that it would go the route of other older parties that lost national strength, becoming localist to the core and focusing on just a few provinces. There seemed to be little path back to national relevance.

Amid reports of increasing division within the party, however, the Democrat leader Chalermchai Sri-orn resigned in September, citing ill health. An operation to bring former Democrat leader (and Thailand’s 27th prime minister), Abhisit Vejjajiva, immediately commenced. It was not immediately clear that Abhisit’s return would be possible. He was no longer even a party member, having given up his membership in 2023, and the party’s current MPs and executive committee members had little reason to be loyal to him. Former prime minister Chuan Leekpai immediately voiced his support for Abhisit, but his faction of the party had long become a powerless minority.

But in a twist, Abhisit was elected unopposed on October 18 as party leader — twenty years after his first term started. How did this happen? Perhaps even the current “mainstream” faction of the party, aligned with the new guard, had realized the dire straits that the Democrats found themselves in. Many MPs were already rumored to be planning to abandon what they saw as a sinking ship; those remaining realized that Abhisit was their best available option.¹ A former prime minister, Abhisit brings gravitas back to the party leadership; the Oxford-educated leader remains one of Thailand’s most well-known politicians. Abhisit, having partnered with neither Palang Pracharath nor Pheu Thai, remained untainted by the partnerships with strange bedfellows that have marked Thai politics over the last few years. Few are as well-positioned as he is to bring disillusioned former Democrat voters back into the fold.

The return of Abhisit marks a comeback for the “old guard” of the party. Returning with Abhisit were several core members from a bygone era, such as former finance minister Korn Chatikavanij and former minister attached to the PM’s Office Sathit Wongnongtoey. The former Bangkok deputy governor, Sakoltee Phattiyakul (who made a better than expected showing in the 2022 gubernatorial election) became deputy leader for Bangkok. Abhisit also made an effort to include new faces in his leadership lineup, however. (After all, he returns to the role now as a party elder). Famous TikToker Juree Numkaew is now deputy leader in charge of party communications. Weraphong Prapha, a former Thailand Trade Representative, was also made deputy leader.

Romance of the Four Kingdoms?

A former Democrat MP, Thepthai Senapong, made the following observation after the leadership election:

Before this it was said that Thai politics is divided into three camps. But after Abhisit returned as leader of the Democrats, there will be another camp, the light blue camp, leading to politics with four camps. This is because the Democrats are not a new party, but a party that was founded 80 years ago and has a secure base of support.

I think that it’s worth thinking through these comments. I do think that the best framework for analyzing Thai politics since 2019 is through a “Romance of Three Kingdoms” kind of lens. But this approach does consolidate the “conservative” parties (Bhumjaithai, Democrat, Palang Pracharath, United Thai Nation, etc.) into a monolithic bloc and obscures the rivalries between them.

For what it’s worth, I think Palang Pracharath and UTN will find it increasingly difficult to remain relevant — both parties are shadows of their former selves. Bhumjaithai, being the current main party of government, seems poised to have its best-ever electoral showing when elections are called next year, building an electoral death star by attracting several local clans and factions from other parties.² But one question remains: Bhumjaithai has never been popular among urbanites, especially in Bangkok. Can they make up this ground? Or can possible the Abhisit-led Democrats fill this gap?

Here, I think that Thepthai has a point. The Democrats have not won any MPs in Bangkok since 2011 — an eternity in Thai politics — but save for Bhumjaithai, their main competitors on the right are largely gone. Abhisit’s return does open a pathway for the party to win back voters that have defected from the Democrats to the “uncle-aligned”³ parties or indeed to Future Forward and Move Forward. Already, Abhisit has made a clear attempt to differentiate his Democrats from the other parties, in a way positioning them as more liberal than the other conservative parties, so to speak, but more royalist than the People’s Party:

You don’t have to ask if we are conservative or democratic, or if we will be progressive conservative. You don’t have to ask us. We declared our ideology since 1946, that we are the original liberal party in Thailand.

I do not want the Democrat Party to be a part of bringing the monarchy into the midst of political conflict…the monarchy is what unites the hearts of Thais and must be above politics, regardless of our political differences.

He also took aim at the Bhumjaithai government, for example by criticizing the decision to bring complex international agreements to a referendum. Abhisit bemoaned the fact that the economy has been “stuck” for ten years and that Thais can now only wait for assistance from schemes such as “Khon La Khrueng Plus” (a signature Anutin program), which can alleviate economic issues for three to four months but will also leave behind public debt.

Yet the road to becoming a truly viable “fourth option” is not easy. The former prime minister comes, of course, with his own liabilities. He remains intensely disliked by Thaksin Shinawatra’s red-shirt supporters, while his rejection of Prayut in 2019 also incurred significant wrath on the right.⁴ The local strength of the party has also been hollowed out by waves of defections. Can the Democrats remain competitive in the South, its longtime stronghold? That is not immediately clear, given the effort that other parties such as Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham are making in winning region. But if it cannot win there, there are few other places where the party can become a force to be reckoned with in just a few months.

Abhisit is probably aware that a return to the premiership appears to be a distant dream at the moment. The party has not won an election since 1992 and doing so has never looked more difficult. Abhisit said in his speech that “everyone knows that in my return, I cannot ‘turn a profit’ — at most I break even or make a loss, which is most likely.” But he said he also felt the need to “return so that this party will remain with Thailand forever.” Whether or not the Democrat Party will survive its ninth decade will indeed depend on him.

1. Luckily for them, Abhisit had pledged when he resigned from the party that he would never join another party.

2. Including many defectors from the Democrats. Abhisit alluded to this, saying that some football players move teams and are no longer able to strike a goal.

3. As Prayut Chan-o-cha and Prawit Wongsuwan were often referred to in the media.

4. The latter could prove to be an even bigger stumbling block for the Democrats, because while Thaksin’s supporters have never been pro-Abhisit, a lot of his former voters from 2007 and 2011 did end up supporting Prayut in 2019.