Sex Supremo Joins Race to Become Bangkok's Mayor

Posted by Mari Nicholson Oct 3, 2008

Khun Chuwit's operations covered massage parlours, hot tub shops, and brothels in which it is said he employed some 1,300 women, not all of them in Patpong although that is the most well-known area. Although prostitution is illegal in Thailand, it is widespread and rarely prosecuted.

Now, the one time sex supremo is a mayoral candidate in the forthcoming elections. His ambition, according to the many interviews he has given, is to clean up Bangkok, despite the fact that he considers the sex trade a cleaner life than the political one. He is financing his own campaign in order to wipe out the hypocrisy and deceit which he claims is rotting Thai politics. This is something he knows at first hand, he claims, as he got rich by paying bribes to allow his sex venues to flourish.

Asked what bribes he paid, by a reporter from AP, he reeled off a list of crimes from graft to traffic.

His reputation as a bruiser does not encourage people to vote for him, and just last week after an interview with a Channel 3 reporter, he elbowed a newscaster in the face and kicked him when he fell. His reason? The reporter made him look bad by asking the wrong questions.

This is not the first time for Chuwit to crusade against corruption. In 2004, after the police failed to protect him when he ran into legal troubles, he got his own back by exposing corruption in the police. He came clean on the bribes he paid, Rolex watches, free services in his clubs, and money – lots of it. Paying bribes did not make much of a dent in his fortune as he claimed to make $30,000 per night from his massage parlours alone.

Now he has turned over a new leaf, sold the sex chain and is hoping to be a contender in the race for Mayor of Bangkok. He is said to be pouring his personal fortune into this new bid, a move that has some cynics convinced there must be more to the job than they know.

Politics is a grey, murky area in Thailand, and even if a “clean” man is elected there is no guarantee that he will be incorruptible. Perhaps Chuwit will manage to work a miracle. He says he doesn’t need to be a sleazy politician – he made enough when he was running his clubs. But the people say, show me a politician that doesn’t want to make more money, and I’ll show you a “hungry ghost”.

Khun Chuwit deserves the last word. “The sex business is not a problem”, he said. “If you don’t have sex, that’s a problem.”