In December, the Democrat Party revealed that it had set up banners of Jurin Laksanawisit, the leader of the party and the deputy prime minister, alongside Chuan Leekpai, the house speaker and a party stalwart, wishing the people a happy new year in every province.
Banners for new year’s greetings are a staple of every political party in Thailand, an easy excuse for politicians to make their names and faces familiar to the electorate before the campaigning season begins in earnest.
But the decision to place both Jurin and Chuan on the poster is a curious one. It raises a number of awkward questions for the party. Is Jurin’s brand so weak that he is stronger when he appears with Chuan? And why is the party figure with the most magnetic pull a former prime minister in his mid-80s?
In a way, as Chuan has aged, the party has aged with him. In the 1990s, with Chuan in his prime as the party leader, the Democrats were the party of hope, representing a new generation. It was the Democrats at their peak, led by a soft-spoken premier with a clean image, whose words were said to be as sweet as honey but as cutting as a knife.
Chuan’s tenure also represented the final period in which the party was electorally competitive: it last won a general election in 1992, and the party came first in the popular vote in 1997, which was the last time it reached the pinnacle of its popularity.
But that popularity was not to last too long as the party suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001 leading Chuan to step down, and despite a brief period in power after parliamentary maneuvering, the Democrats have never come close to winning an election in the last two decades.
At least it was always the key nemesis of the various incarnation of Thaksinite parties, though; then the disaster of the 2019 election befell, forcing the Democrats into becoming a midsized junior coalition partner.
Now, as the party faces another general election this year, over 20-years removed from the era to which he belonged, the Democrats are still harkening back to the familiar figure of Chuan.
Gone are the Oxford-educated, cosmopolitan figures of the previous leadership like Abhisit Vejjajiva or Korn Chatikavanij, pushed aside by the scale of the 2019 catastrophe. No new generation, on the other hand, have risen to replace them in the party. In their place, instead, is Jurin.
The problems that have plagued Jurin’s leadership are legion. Even as the leader insists the Democrats have been infused with new blood, the party is obviously bleeding out a lot more talent than it is taking in.
The loss of its Bangkok base has transformed the Democrats into an almost purely regional party focused on the south; its appeal has narrowed with it.
Where the previous leadership spoke of transformational policies, the current endlessly talk about virtually only one thing: agricultural price guarantees. An important issue, to be sure, but one that only cements the party’s image to urbanites as hopelessly parochial.
Suchatvee Suwansawat’s mauling by Chadchart Sittipunt in the Bangkok governor race last year, after a series of self-inflicted mistakes, dealt the party’s comeback attempt a heavy blow. The scandals of its ex-deputy leader, Prinn Panitchapakdi, sunk the party’s image to new lows.
Every couple of months rumors emerge of infighting and attempts to force Jurin out. At the same time as everyone inside the party is talking about whether they support him or not, however, virtually no one who is not a political junkie thinks about him; the leader is far-eclipsed by 2014 coup leader and current Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Palang Pracharath party’s leader Prawit Wongsuwon, and Bhumjai Thai party leader Anutin Charnvirakul.
Abhisit was not an electoral juggernaut, but at least people talked about him and knew who he is.
Yet for the Democrats, this is no time to be struggling in the polls. At the last election the party was downsized. This time, should it experience another heavy defeat, it could face extinction. Thailand’s oldest political party, which will celebrate the 77th anniversary of its founding this year on April 6th, is showing its age.
Their leaders, of course, are putting on a brave face. Party secretary-general Chalermchai Sri-orn has promised to quit politics if the Democrats win less than their previous total of 52 seats. Jurin has noted that they won only 22 seats in their southern stronghold last time, and that there is a “high possibility” of winning 58 from that region alone. The party is also confident of a “comeback” in Bangkok.
Many obstacles stand in their way. Firstly, the loss of old blood that the Democrats suffered means that it can no longer rely on many of the networks that its missing local leaders used to provide. Some political observers noted that this was a problem the party faced at the local elections in Bangkok last year; this time, it could experience this issue nationwide.
This is particularly true in the south, where several key figures have left Democrat party to join Ruam Thai Sang Chat or Palang Pracharath.
Secondly, conservative voters who fear the return of Thaksin Shinawatra — this year in the form of a daughter of the blood, Paethongtharn Shinawatra — have a much more obvious choice in the Ruam Thai Sang Chat Party, which Prime Minister Prayut is standing for. This represents a similar dynamic as in 2019, when anti-Thaksin voters swung to the Palang Pracharath en masse.
Indeed, the party is still suffering from an identity crisis that has haunted it since 2019. At that election, Abhisit had campaigned on opposing Prayut; the party, claiming that was a personal promise of a leader that then departed, promptly reneged on that pledge and joined Prayut’s coalition.
But in doing so, the party alienated both pro-Prayut and anti-Prayut voters. It is too conservative to appeal to younger voters who have flocked to Move Forward, but it is also not conservative enough to win back its previous base.
The extinction of the Democrats would not displease most of Thaksin’s fans or progressives. But it would still be a loss in the sense that the Democrat Party is the only truly institutionalized political party, an organization that has persisted for seven decades.
It is also, in a sense, one of the few parties without an ‘owner,’ with genuine inner democracy. But even as Jurin talks this up as a strength of the party in the coming campaign, few voters are likely to take notice when more important bread and butter issues and ideological concerns are at stake.
It also doesn’t help that Jurin himself spends more time in his party speeches talking about the need to stand by a clear ideology than actually elucidating what ideology he professes to believe in. “If we don’t have an ideology…we’d be like a tree with no roots. Once a political storm hits, we’ll fall down.”
That may be precisely the problem facing the Democrats. A political storm is coming, and whether or not the tree will stand is very much an open question.