DEMOCRAT LEADER Abhisit Vejjajiva marked the party’s 72nd anniversary celebrations yesterday by highlighting liberal democracy as its continuing core value and he also distanced himself from the junta that is looking to remain in politics.

Democrats will compete with both the Junta and the Pheu Thai Party, he said.

“The Democrat Party’s way will differ from others. While the National Council for Peace and Order centralises power to a bureaucratic system, we aim to decentralise it,” Abhisit said.

“And Pheu Thai – they focus on populism but we think about sustainability, welfare and rights.”

With the political climate today centred on emerging young new players who pledge to bring fresh ideas to the table, the former PM said the younger members of the Democrat party would work alongside the older ones. The Democrat Party also needed to make some changes, he admitted. Abhisit also predicted a constitutional amendment could be possible after the upcoming election.

Due to impractical clauses that led to the failure of reform and graft fighting, the people would pressure the junta-appointed Senate to agree to make amendments, he said.

However, Abhisit said politicians also needed to prove themselves in order to boost people’s faith in them.

A large number of party members attended yesterday’s anniversary celebrations. Among them were prominent Democrat Party leaders Akanat Promphan and Nattapol Teepsuwan, who turned up to reaffirm their allegiance amid uncertainty over whether those who had led the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) would form a new party to support the junta or return to their former base. PDRC head Suthep Thaugsuban, who had vowed not to return to politics, did not attend the event, although he had been a Democrat key member as well as Abhisit’s deputy prime minister.

Ex-party leader and Democrat patriarch Chuan Leekpai stressed the country needed to move forward, following criticism that the Party had often been attacked for not playing by the rules and siding with the military.

“We know that a crisis has been caused by the business of politics but we must uphold democracy, with the monarch as the head of the state, as well as with the parliamentary system,” Chuan said. In response to the junta head PM Prayut Chan-o-cha’s remarks that politicians were bad, Chuan said some soldiers were bad, too. He urged politicians to stand up against such insults. There were both good and bad people in every profession, he said.