The one-time sex tycoon who would be mayor wants to clean up this sprawling, gritty city where he grew rich overseeing an empire of flesh. 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."But that life ended, thanks to a series of scandals that made him a celebrity. Now, Chuwit is an underdog candidate in Bangkok's governor race, financing his own campaign to take on what he sees as the hypocrisy and deceit 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 graft to traffic to unemployment. "If you want to listen to the truth, you listen to me."
On Thursday, three days ahead of the vote, Chuwit punched a newscaster in the face and then kicking him when he fell to the ground. Chuwit was being interviewed by the Channel 3 reporter in the network's studio and erupted after the taping ended, saying the reporter made him look bad by asking confrontational questions.
Before Chuwit became a crusader against corruption, he employed some 1,300 women in a string of brothels thinly disguised as massage parlors named Victoria's Secret, Emmanuelle and Honolulu. 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 — Rolex watches, free services and, he said recently, "money in a garbage bag because it was too much for an envelope."
He says he made one million baht — the equivalent of $30,000 — a night at the massage parlors and he went public only because the police failed to protect him when he ran into his own legal troubles. Chuwit sold the parlors and rode his popularity to a strong but unsuccessful finish in the last mayor's race. This year, farther from the scandal and tougher from the political loss, he is pouring his personal fortune into a new and, he says, final bid for mayor.
A tireless man with a thin mustache and a square jaw, Chuwit, always quick with one-liners, is honest about his limitations: "I cannot fix the traffic. Nobody can fix the traffic." But he promises to fight government stasis and instead of kissing babies he has adopted an angry man persona. His campy posters show him glowering over a pair of binoculars meant to suggest a penetrating gaze. There are concerns that Chuwit is perhaps too comfortable in the economy's "gray areas" to trust with a seat like the governor's but Chuwit says his years as a marketer of sleaze were successful enough that he doesn't need to become a sleazy politician. As for those who disapprove of his years in the hot tubs, Chuwit shrugs. "The sex business is not a problem," he said. "If you don't have sex, that's a problem."