With his Eton and Oxford education, his dark good looks, and his quiet upper-class enunciation, he might be a thrusting young London barrister, or a member of David Cameron’s Shadow Cabinet. But despite his impeccably British patrician upbringing, he is about to be plunged into the politics of South-East Asia’s most chaotic country.

If all goes as expected, then Abhisit Vejjajiva, will tomorrow be elected Thailand’s latest prime minister, inheriting a country bitterly divided between the poor and the affluent, the rural and the urban, the mass and the elite. But the man in charge of healing these bitter wounds is better remembered in Britain as “Mark Vejj”, a bright, charming, posh overseas student with an unpronounceable full name.

His Thai supporters insist that only he can bring to an end the three years of conflict that culminated in the hijacking of Bangkok international airport by anti-government protesters. His opponents hold that he is a callow politician, the stooge of vested interests, who has consistently failed to win power through fair electoral means, and whose privileged foreign upbringing leaves him wholly unequipped to understand the problems of Thailand's rural poor.

Mr Abhisit’s election tomorrow is not guaranteed but, as leader of the Democrat Party, he appears to have a better chance than anyone else when an emergency session of parliament meets to choose a new prime minister. It has come about because of a ruling by the Thai Constitutional Court disbanding the ruling People Power Party (PPP) that won a general election last December.

Dismissal of the Government was the principal demand of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), whose supporters took over Suvarnabhumi Airport, . After the court dissolved the PP because of electoral bribery by one of its members, the PAD withdrew from Suvarnabhumi and called off months of demonstrations and illegal occupations of government buildings.

It is this combination of illegal protest and judicial diktat – not political popularity and elections – that has given the Democrat Party its chance at government. The Democrats won barely a third of seats in 2007, even less than that in 2001 and 2005, and boycotted the snap 2006 election altogether.

“Abhisit has proved he can’t win elections,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Professor of Political Science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “On paper, he’s qualified, bicultural, bilingual. But he’s being hoisted into office by the powers that be, above the heads of the rural majority of Thailand.”

Politically, it is difficult to say what exactly Mr Abhisit, 44, and his party stand for. Born in Newcastle to Thai parents who were medical professors, he presents himself as a liberal in the European mould. In practice, he appears motivated principally by opposition to Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed and exiled prime minister who transformed Thai politics.

Before he came to office, governments had been controlled by parties of the urban elite, older versions of Mr Abhisit with cosmopolitan educations, strong connections to the Thai military and monarchy, but little concern with or experience of the needs of poor Thais.

Mr Thaksin was held widely to be corrupt (he was convicted of a multimillion-pound property fraud this year), but he did genuinely improve life in the countryside with cheap health care, micro-credit and a murderous crackdown on narcotics dealers which eased the drug problem in Thai villages.

The Thai elite, including Mr Abhisit, accused him of using his vast personal wealth to corrode the country’s democratic institutions. But the elections were fair enough to show that the poor were electing him over and over again. In 2006, the army stepped in, deposed Mr Thaksin in a coup, and changed the constitution to improve the chances of the Democrat Party. They lost again to the PPP, an unapologetic vehicle for supporters of Mr Thaksin.

As a self-styled liberal and democrat, Mr Abhisit expressed mild discomfort at the coup, but never repudiated it; and he and his party have supported the illegal and sometimes violent campaign of the PAD.

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