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A landslide is a landslide, but 1.44 million votes is a clear love letter. That's roughly the number of Bangkokians who put their cross beside Chadchart Sittipunt on June 28, handing the broad-shouldered engineer a second term and smashing the record he set himself four years ago. The man fondly nicknamed 'Hulk' cycled to his own polling station, because of course he did. And the message from the city reads plainly enough, keep going.
For four years the slogan 'Work, Work, Work' did the heavy lifting, and the receipts back it up. More than 100 finished projects, fresh pockets of green, knotty old problems finally starting to loosen. Yet a megacity this size always keeps a few wounds open.
Floods still come. Traffic still crawls. The air still stings on a rotten day. But this second term looks like a victory lap – another chance to mend what the first four years never quite completed. Or maybe it’s just proof that a city is never truly finished.
If you missed it, we interviewed Chadchart last year, seeing what he was proud of and what he had yet to address. Check out our video interviews here.
This time round Chadchart and his crew don't reach for the same playbook. They raise the bar across four strategic pillars, each one a promise to reshape how Bangkok runs:
- A livable city: People-first policies that look after residents of every age, body and mind, from prevention through to treatment. Think housing closer to work, full welfare access for vulnerable groups, room for all genders, and schools that hand kids future-ready skills while easing the load on teachers and parents.
- A resilient, accessible city: Better feeder transport feeding the main lines, cleaner air and water, more green space, pet-friendly public corners, sharper disaster planning and a flexible city plan steering Bangkok towards low-carbon living.
- A stronger economy: The Next Learn scheme to match workers with what employers actually want, easier funding and trading space for small businesses, culture pushed as soft power, year-round festivals and government services that finally go digital.
- Transparent governance: AI to streamline the bureaucracy, budgets anyone can follow, and more channels for residents to have their say.
New for this term are tailored policies covering all 50 districts, shaped by gripes and ideas logged through the Traffy Fondue platform, so each neighbourhood gets a fix built for its own quirks.
With more than 250 action plans ready from day one, this isn't a stretch of trial and error. It's a run at the things that have held the city back for too long. The whole point of that million-vote mandate is simple: make sure 'Bangkok works' for everyone in it.
We guess the four more years will tell…