Passersby stopped Thailand’s former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva every now and again to ask for selfies as he walked through a bustling market in Bangkok, campaigning for general elections on February 8.
“Good to see you again, still handsome just like before,” said one noodle vendor, reflecting voters’ enduring warm feelings for the Oxford-trained economist who was making an unexpected comeback to frontline politics.
Abhisit’s return has fuelled a revival of his Democrat Party, reshaping an electoral contest that previously looked like a three-way tussle among the ruling Bhumjaithai Party, the progressive People’s Party, and the populist Pheu Thai Party.
“I just want to offer a choice and revive the party,” Abhisit, 61, told Reuters as he strolled down a major road in the capital, greeting office workers on lunch breaks. “Every time I meet people, they are frustrated with the lack of choice.”
Government employee Yuttapum Rattanamanee, aged 37 and a voter from northeast Thailand, said he was one of four in his family backing the Democrats again because Abhisit had returned to lead the party.
“When Abhisit left, the party lost its power because people no longer trusted the leadership,” Rattanamanee added. “Abhisit is capable, competent, and honest.”
Thailand’s oldest political party, the Democrats, had long dominated southern and Bangkok before sliding into decline after a military coup in 2014.
Despite the goodwill, Abhisit is unlikely to get enough support to become prime minister, according to recent surveys. However, he has helped his party win back conservative voters by reinvigorating it through his personal appeal, noted political scientist Olarn Thinbangtieo of Burapha University.
“Its earlier decline came from leadership that drifted away from the party’s principles,” Olarn added. “His return has lifted support.”
As prime minister from 2008 to 2011, Abhisit faced prolonged street protests by the “Red Shirt” populist movement backed by former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who also founded Pheu Thai.
In 2010, he ordered a military crackdown on demonstrations in central Bangkok that killed 90, with rights groups blaming excessive and unnecessary lethal force used by security forces.
Thai courts dismissed all the criminal cases faced by Abhisit and senior officials involved in the incident. In 2023, the party slid further, winning just 25 out of 500 seats up for grabs.
Now the Democrats are resurgent, opinion polls largely driven by Abhisit’s personal appeal show. A survey by the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) ranked Abhisit third among likely prime ministerial candidates last week, while his Democrat Party took fourth place overall.
That suggests the party could emerge as a pivotal force in talks to form a coalition after an election that is expected to give no single party an outright majority. The Democrats’ gains could come at the expense of the ruling Bhumjaithai, splitting conservative and older voters nationwide.
Nevertheless, NIDA’s survey put Abhisit a distant third to be prime minister, behind frontrunner People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut and second-ranked Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul.
Much of Abhisit’s support comes from his party’s traditional southern heartland, parts of which were ravaged by catastrophic floods in November, killing 145 in nine provinces. In the key province of Songkhla, swamped by its highest single-day rainfall in 300 years, a January survey showed Abhisit as the top choice for premier, well ahead of the incumbent Anutin.
“It suggests that southern people are coming back, warming to us,” Abhisit added.
Yet winning in the capital, Thailand’s largest electoral block with 33 seats and 4.5 million voters—a seat that was almost entirely swept by a predecessor of the People’s Party in 2023—will be a tough task for the Democrats.
“Ideally, we would have liked more preparation,” Abhisit said, referring to the party’s campaign in Bangkok.
The snap elections came after Anutin dissolved parliament in December amid a fierce border conflict with neighboring Cambodia. Analysts said this was timed to help the ruling party ride a wave of heightening nationalism. Yet the current campaign is not solely based on nostalgia for Abhisit, who became prime minister at age 44 after a youthful start as a member of parliament at 27.
“It’s about transforming the party as well as reviving it,” he said. “We’re bringing back the principles people once supported us for.”