A REFORMED sex tycoon running to be governor of Bangkok wants to clean up the sprawling, gritty city where he grew rich. But weeks of shaking hands and giving speeches have left him longing for the days of massage girls and hot tubs.
"Politics is so dirty, so ugly," Chuwit Kamolvisit sighs. "I would rather sit tight in the nightclub, surrounded by girls, smoking cigars, drinking brandy, champagne. That was the perfect life."
In his new life, Chuwit is financing his own electio
n campaign to take on the hypocrisy and deceit he sees rotting Thai politics.
Who better to wipe out bribes, he argues, than the former king of sleaze who got rich paying them?
"I tell the truth," Chuwit, 47, said in an interview, reeling off a list of issues from corruption to traffic to unemployment. "If you want to listen to the truth, you listen to me."
Chuwit is running a distant second, trailing the leading candidate by as much as 30 percentage points in recent opinion polls.
The stress may be taking its toll.
Yesterday, three days ahead of the vote, Chuwit elbowed a newscaster in the face and then kicked him when he fell to the ground. Chuwit was being interviewed on television and erupted after the taping ended, saying the reporter made him look bad by asking confrontational questions.
"A man like me, you can kill him but you can't insult him," he said during a press conference following the incident. "I apologised for what I did ... but I had to do it."
Before Chuwit became a crusader against corruption, he employed some 1,300 women in a string of thinly-disguised brothels. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand, but widespread and rarely prosecuted.
He became a local hero in 2004 when he exposed corruption in the unpopular police force by listing the bribes he paid to senior officers.
He says he made one million baht – the equivalent of £17,000 – each night from the massage parlours, and he went public only because the police failed to protect him when he ran into his own legal troubles.
Chuwit sold the parlours and rode his popularity to a strong but unsuccessful finish in the last governor's race in 2004.
Chuwit, always quick with one-liners, is honest about his limitations: "I cannot fix the traffic. Nobody can fix the traffic."
Instead of kissing babies, he has adopted an angry man persona. His posters show him glowering over a pair of binoculars meant to suggest a penetrating gaze.
Around Bangkok's main business district, some voters said they disliked Chuwit because of his controversial past, but others said he fitted well in the dirty business of Thai politics.
"I believe that no Thai politician is clean," said Tam Sompon, 40, browsing through golf clubs at a sport shop. "A good background doesn't guarantee that a candidate won't be corrupt in office. I will vote for Chuwit because he can work for us swiftly and aggressively."
As for those who disapprove, Chuwit shrugs.
"The sex business is not a problem," he said. "If you don't have sex, that's a problem."
ANALYSISTHE front-runner in the election is Apirak Kosayodhin, a former mobile phone executive running for re-election on the Democrat Party ticket after completing a four-year term last month.
Mr Apirak has few signature accomplishments from his first term, but he is the kind of well-educated professional usually favoured by Bangkok voters.
The election's big issues are familiar ones: traffic, pollution, schools. They are difficult to tackle from City Hall because the governor – the official title of the city's top elected post – has restricted power, as central government controls the funds needed for most essential services.
