Thai protest veteran Sondhi launches 'Take Back Thailand' campaign against PM Anutin

Sondhi Limthongkul is seventy-eight years old and back in the streets. Nearly two decades have passed since he led the yellow-shirt demonstrations that shut down Bangkok's airports and toppled governments, but the veteran protest organizer has launched what he calls his "last mission": a campaign named "Take Back Thailand" designed to keep Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's administration perpetually off balance.

Sondhi's stated goal is not immediate overthrow. Instead, he wants to build a permanent political force—a grassroots counterweight that will outlast any single leader or election cycle. Speaking from his Bangkok office, now the headquarters of his campaign, he described his ambition in direct terms: to mobilize Thais across the country, to give people tools to question their government, and to ensure that whoever holds power next will face the same pressure his movement applies today. "I want to create bargaining power for the people," he said. "No matter who comes after Anutin, they will have to face us."

The strategy differs markedly from his earlier work. Two decades ago, Sondhi had a single target—Thaksin Shinawatra, the telecom tycoon whose electoral machine built a formidable base among rural and working-class Thais. That clarity of purpose, combined with backing from Bangkok's middle class, business elites, and the conservative establishment, made the yellow-shirt movement a force that could paralyze the capital. In 2008, yellow-shirt protesters occupied both of Bangkok's major airports, including Suvarnabhumi, the country's main international gateway, shutting it for roughly a week and stranding approximately three thousand travelers. The conflict spawned the rival red shirts, largely supporters of Thaksin, and years of competing street protests, court interventions, and two military coups followed, entrenching a cycle of political instability that still weighs on Thailand's economy today.

Now Sondhi is operating without those powerful conservative allies. Much of the establishment that once opposed Thaksin is aligned with or sympathetic to Anutin and his Bhumjaithai Party. His new approach tackles disparate issues—living costs, corruption, alleged political interference, foreign criminal networks—each controversy offering another opportunity to mobilize supporters and expand beyond his traditional base. Yet this breadth carries risk. Yuttaporn Issarachai, a lecturer at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, noted that an all-issue movement lacks the focus that made Sondhi's earlier campaigns effective. "Many of the issues he is raising now don't directly affect people's livelihoods, making it harder to mobilise them," Issarachai said. "But if the economy deteriorates and people feel worse off a year from now, that could provide the catalyst for a much broader movement."

Anutin won a sweeping election victory in February on a promise of stability after years of political turmoil, helping restore investor confidence and propel Thai stocks into the world's best performers this year. When asked about Sondhi's movement on September 12, Anutin dismissed it as counterproductive. "Does Sondhi want to make people unhappy?" he said. "This administration is determined to work for the Thai people every second of every day. I believe Thai people are still willing to give me a chance and still believe in my government."

Sondhi's reach is substantial. His Facebook following exceeds five million, while his Sondhi Talk YouTube channel has approximately 2.5 million subscribers. His programs generate about 100 million views monthly across major platforms, with numbers spiking to 171 million in August as he prepared for mobilization. Yet he acknowledges a hard truth: converting that digital audience into street protesters is far more difficult than mobilizing the television viewers who followed him two decades ago.

Last week, he offered an early demonstration of his multi-issue approach, leading hundreds of activists to Israel's embassy in one of Bangkok's busiest commercial districts to protest what he characterized as Israeli visitors disregarding Thai laws and customs. More significantly, a Constitutional Court ruling scheduled for September 28 could invalidate the results of February's election that returned Anutin to power. Sondhi plans to travel to several provinces in the coming weeks to rally supporters and build pressure ahead of that decision. He has stopped short of calling for Anutin's removal, but his language suggests inevitability. "The bad things just keep piling up," he said. "Every single thing done by the government is like adding fuel to the inside of the house. People's dissatisfaction takes time. But one strike of a match, and it would all go up in flames."

The resurgence of street politics after several years of relative calm points to discontent building beneath Thailand's surface. Whether Sondhi can convert that discontent into sustained pressure—and whether economic conditions deteriorate enough to catalyze the broader mobilization he envisions—remains to be seen. What is clear is that the old yellow-red divide that once defined Thai politics has lost its meaning, replaced by a more complex landscape where the establishment itself has become the target.