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Gyaos
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It is worth a read! I like the paragraph that lists all the bathhouses....I must make a visit and have a bath! I need one! 
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 9:53 pm on Feb. 28, 2004
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madfrog
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Interesting reading, I dont know much about this Chuwit guys but he seem to be a character and to have some balls too.
Madfrog
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Sexy Bangkok Girls
Posted on: 4:49 am on Feb. 29, 2004
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hzink
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Damn, would be nice if the guardian website was actually up. Anyone can paste a copy of the article?
Harry
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Attractive Thai Girls
Posted on: 1:07 pm on Feb. 29, 2004
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hzink
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Thanks a bunch - much appreciated. Yes, great article.
So, what chance will he have in the elections? Didn't know he got beaten up. A regular Larry Flint of Thailand - maybe someone should introduce the two of them.
Harry
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Attractive Thai Girls
Posted on: 6:18 pm on Feb. 29, 2004
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BKKRH
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The brothel king's revenge
He's the godfather of the Thai sex industry - and what he knows about corruption could bring down the government. By Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy
Saturday February 21, 2004
The Guardian
If you want to drive to the heart of a political scandal that has shaken Thailand, just tell the taxi driver to head for "Soapland", a 5km stretch of neon that slices through north Bangkok. Every night, thousands of Thai punters flock to this garish highway flanked by high-class sex clubs, spending (according to one recent academic study) an incredible £1.5bn a year. But as prostitution is illegal in the kingdom, the signs above every doorway say Ap Ob Nuat, Thai for "steamy hot shower massage". It's hardly a sophisticated front, but until last summer this vast sex industry prospered without attracting unwelcome attention.
Then in July last year, Soapland's most powerful jao phor, or godfather, broke the unwritten code of silence. Chuwit Kamolvisit, who was estimated to have made between £50m and £100m from the district's six most exclusive clubs, went on nationwide television to announce that Soapland sold sex and everyone knew it. Chuwit revealed that some of his best clients were senior politicians and police officers, whom he also claimed to have paid, over a decade, more than £1.5m in bribes so that his business, the real business of selling sex, could thrive.
Motivated by what Chuwit described as the Royal Thai Police's persistent attempts to extract ever increasing bribes from his sex empire, he then launched a series of allegations that today threaten to pull down the Thai government. Calling newspaper reporters to the front entrance of his Copa Cabana club, the millionaire pimp revealed that he had kept a diary in which was detailed every one of his company's commercial and sexual transactions. As a taster, Chuwit alleged that days earlier (on July 7 2003) four senior police officers had used the services of his masseurs, numbers 103, 130, 137 and 299.
The Thai media was gripped by Chuwit's claims and the headlines ran: Top Cops Got Free Sex And Drinks. Although Thailand's foreign sex trade, with its ping-pong girls, pole dancers and £3 hand jobs, is overt and raucous, the enormous industry that caters exclusively for Thai men had never before been publicly scrutinised, let alone the sexual mores of Thailand's unchallengeable officials. But now, in downtown Bangkok, General Sant Sarutanond, Thailand's commissioner general of police, was forced to act and reluctantly ordered an investigation into Chuwit's claims.
No one publicly berated the Royal Thai Police. With its tanks and military ranks, the police is a paramilitary force that has demonstrated a hardline attitude to those it sees as enemies of the state. An inquiry is currently under way into claims by human rights groups that the Royal Thai Police was complicit in the deaths of 2,849 people, killed last year in a 12-week government campaign to eradicate drugs.
Days after Sant's bribery investigation was launched, Chuwit called reporters back to the blacked-out doors of Copa Cabana and claimed that police station "H", commanded by Superintendent "T", had been bought off by him for 355,000 baht (£4,900) a month for 10 years. Officers at Huai Khwang precinct (half a mile down the road) were placed under investigation and its commander, Colonel Thitipong Settisombat, suspended. "Transfer The Entire Station," one broadsheet demanded.
Smelling blood, Chuwit described a "tall police general" with the initial "S" who had secret stakes in two massage parlours. Thai papers gleefully reported: Officer Has Shares In Sex Venue Firm. Sant himself was called before the House Committee on Police Affairs, where he admitted that he had a four million baht (£55,000) investment in a hotel in Soapland, but maintained that he had nothing to hide (and launched a libel action against Chuwit).
As the Thai public anticipated further revelations, a rumour spread that the jao phor of Soapland had vanished. For two days no one could find Chuwit. There was no sign of him at Copa Cabana or at any of his five other clubs. Wild speculation filled newspaper columns. Had he been abducted by rogue police officers attempting to shut him up? Maybe Chuwit was dead. Then, on July 11, a dazed man was found by a taxi driver wandering on the hard shoulder of the Bangkok-Chon Buri motorway. He was driven to hospital where he was identified as Chuwit. After being checked over, Chuwit called a bedside press conference in which he claimed that he had been taken hostage, drugged and beaten by men he said were in the pay of the Royal Thai Police. Even though the police strenuously denied responsibility, the headlines the next day reported: "Chuwit saga: payback time."
Once discharged from hospital, Chuwit held an impromptu rally outside Government House and warned the crowd, "I am now a man with no future. I may be shot dead at any time." The morning papers all covered the event: "Huge Media Circus Follows Sex King."
The Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, blanched. Before becoming a politician, he had served as a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Thai Police and had appointed many of his former police colleagues to senior positions in the cabinet and civil service. He needed the support of the police to stay in power. However, Thaksin had been elected in January 2001 on a populist mandate to curb institutionalised corruption and here was a pimp demonstrating that, midterm, bribery was still endemic and its exponents were the police.
Thaksin had to be seen to act. On July 12, the prime minister announced that all of Chuwit's allegations would be investigated. Within days, four police major generals were suspended, as were nine colonels, six lieutenant colonels, one major, 20 deputy station chiefs and crime suppression inspectors, and 11 lower-ranking police officers.
But Chuwit would not stop. He announced dab krueng chon, a declaration of all-out war against the establishment. Describing himself as "a weapon of mass destruction", he claimed in public that three cabinet ministers with the initials "S", "P" and "P" had received expensive gifts from him, and that one was a regular at Copa Cabana. Pracha Maleenont, the deputy interior minister, went on record to say he had visited massage parlours, but "that was long ago". For the second time in less than a month, the prime minister was forced to act. Thaksin announced that he would conduct a moral purge of his party, sacking any MP found to have a mistress or patronise brothels.
Still it was not enough for Chuwit. In September, he registered his own political party, Ton Trakul Thai (First Thai Nation, or TTT), launching the most unorthodox political movement Thailand has seen. The pimp claimed he could do a better job than the government at ending institutionalised corruption. Promising to sell his sex business to fund his bid for election (claiming he would throw in a free personal tutorial on "how to buy off the police"), marching to the slogan of "Brave To Think, Brave To Talk, Brave to Do", Chuwit and his TTT party experienced a groundswell of support. Within weeks of his taking to the hustings, 50,000 had registered with the party.
The government changed tactics. The country's Anti-Money-Laundering Organisation (AMLO), a quasi police body, attacked Chuwit as an itthipon meut, or "dark influence", on society, and froze a number of his bank accounts. The police shut down two of his six bathhouses, raiding the ones that remained open, charging Chuwit with pimping underage girls and procuring women for sex. The Empire Strikes Back, one headline read (although the government denied malice).
But it was too late. Chuwit Kamolvisit, a man from the margins, someone who admitted to having been "born bad", had already been transformed from a smut peddler into an unsung patriot. He had exposed the kingdom's rawest nerve, talking about what the Thais call suay and the west calls bribery, the giving of tribute money, a factor in everyone's daily life. Professor Sungsidh Piriyarangsan, an economist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University who has studied the nation's black economy, said, "Chuwit's fight is brave and will help us understand the dark side of our society."
In December, Thailand's leading English-language daily named Chuwit "Person of the Year". Declaring that suay was as "common in Thailand as cockroaches", The Nation wrote: "It now follows for the Thais to decide if they are willing to tolerate injustice or turn out strongly to demand what they really deserve." The Thai people will be able to make that decision imminently. Elections are due to be held in the country's 74 provinces on March 14, and a general election follows in February 2005. But when the authorities are accused of being criminal and the criminals present themselves as just, who should the voters believe?
Chuwit has five mobile phones, six bathhouses, a general office, two wives and at least two homes, one of them called Sea Of Love. We are trying them all. "Is Mr Chuwit there?" No one answers at his massage parlour, Victoria's Secret. We call another, Emmanuelle: "Not here." We call Honolulu, Chuwit's "Love Boat Club". Nothing. It's the same story at the Hi-Class, Barbara and Poseidon (where the foyer is shaped like an ocean liner). For a man so much in the public eye, Chuwit is nowadays remarkably difficult to pin down. Perhaps he always was.
Finally, we reach him. "Oh," he says, when we explain who we are. "Well, I'm trying to keep a low profile. Get on with election business. Not make too much heat." Pause. "From London, you say? Oh. A newspaper?" A very long pause. "Come to my office now." He gives us an address in Soapland.
We find Chuwit's campaign headquarters nestling smugly down a discreet lane at the Copa Cabana entertainment complex. Up a marble staircase flanked by cement Landseer lions are the much-photographed blacked-out doors above which is Chuwit's old slogan from the days when he was simply a pimp: "Work For Living, Love For Life."
Inside, we are bustled into a windowless karaoke room. After an hour's wait, a man in shiny trousers, a day-old white shirt and drooping black moustache strolls in. Chuwit is slightly disappointing in the flesh and through chipped teeth he mumbles an apology for his tardiness. He stares at us and then launches into a well-rehearsed offensive: "I am a bad person. You're thinking it. But at least I am honest about what I do." We hear water swishing around a bathtub in a nearby room.
"Take sex," he continues, lighting a Mild Seven cigarette. "We have more sex in Thailand than in any country in the world, but politicians pretend brothels don't exist." Chuwit starts scribbling figures on the back of a 10% discount voucher for Copa Cabana. "I pay three million baht [£41,000] in taxes every month. The permit issued to my bathhouses by the government is calculated on a room-by-room basis, that's 500,000 baht [£7,000] for every room, so with six clubs it means that I pay the Thai exchequer 18 million baht [£247,000]. What do they think we do here? As for the police, I threw away five million baht [£69,000] a month giving them free services. I paid them 12 million baht a month [£165,000] in bribes. I had a delivery boy whose only job was to drive around on a little Suzuki scooter distributing cash." He motions to a notional mountain of money on the table. A falsetto laugh echoes down the corridor. "You see, you can ask me anything," Chuwit says.
Why should anyone vote for a pimp?
He scratches his ear with a long, manicured fingernail and then his pockets begin to trill with polyphonic tones. One by one, he fishes out a succession of identical silver flip-top Motorola phones. "Sorry," he shrugs. "My campaign managers. Why vote for me? Because I don't lie. Everything I have said has been proved correct. And I have lots more to say."
Chuwit explains why he decided to go public. "I inherited the system of bribery from the man who sold me my first club - the Love Motel," he says. The sound of bare wet feet slaps around a neighbouring bathroom. "I understood the police. And they understood me. Our relationship was like the body and the coffin. We went together. Silently. But then it started to go mad." Chuwit contemplates his mobile phones: "Senior officers began ringing me all the time. 'My son, he's just graduated - he needs a new house.' I couldn't say no. Never get too close to the police or they will pull you down. I decided to talk out to end the corruption."
Chuwit glances at his watch. "Sorry, I have to go," he says. "I am off to a campaign rally. I already have tens of thousands of party members, but I need more. Today, it's the north-east, where the people are really poor and understand my anti-corruption message. Thais are quiet. They like to compromise. I am saying don't be quiet. Be loud like westerners."
Does Chuwit see himself as a Thai-style Larry Flynt, Hustler's show-all pornographer who took the moral majority all the way to the US supreme court and won (despite an assassination attempt) ? "I'm an original," is all he says, ushering us out.
A Mercedes with tinted glass pulls up at the VIP entrance and deposits a customer. Chuwit smiles. "At first they stayed away. Wary of the scandal. But where there are men, there will always be the business of sex," he says.
Police spokesman Major General Pongsaphat Pongcharoen isn't taking calls. His mobile phone is switched off. We send text messages. Several a day. "Dear Major General, etc, etc." No response. Up the ladder we go, faxing the four police stations under investigation, sending messages to the nine colonels, six lieutenant colonels and one major suspended, calling round at the homes of the four major generals facing investigation. Mercedes cars in the drive. Golf clubs by the steps. Faces at the windows. But, apparently, no one at home.
At the downtown office of the police general, Sant Sarutanond, a secretary says, "Send a fax."
We do. "You can have an interview. Call back in four days."
We do. "Ah, he's gone to Vietnam for a week. Call back."
We do. "I'm sorry but he cannot possibly talk to you at the moment." He has been ordered to investigate police collusion in the 2,849 death toll in the government's war against drugs.
However, the secretary-general of Thailand's AMLO agrees to meet us in his office, decorated with orchids and copies of his four university degree certificates. Police Major General Peeraphan Prempooti is leading the campaign against so-called "dark influences". He immediately downplays the pimp's significance. "Why all this fuss over Mr Chuwit?" he says. "He's small fry. I would like to believe Mr Chuwit, but when I called him here to give evidence on his bribery allegations, he refused to name names." The major general says the government planned to target corruption long before the Chuwit saga began. "It's the prime minister who is gauging levels of corruption, not Mr Chuwit. Our PM asked all agencies to join hands and fight drug trafficking and 'dark influences'. And, as it happens, Mr Chuwit is one of our 'dark influences'. Next Monday, my 100th money-laundering case will be listed in the civil court and it is against Mr Chuwit. We have frozen six of his bank accounts."
Some parliamentarians have accused the government of running a vendetta against Chuwit. The major general says this is untrue. "No one will escape the net," he adds. "I personally conduct money-laundering probes. They are all genuine. Already we have seized three billion baht [£41m] from a plethora of 'dark influences'. If you want to know more about the nature of Mr Chuwit, then I suggest you look at the beer bar scandal of January 2003."
He is referring to an episode in the early hours of January 26 last year, when a 400-strong demolition team encircled Sukhumvit Square, a plot of land in downtown Bangkok that had become a makeshift tourist night market of bars, restaurants and shops. Within minutes, the site had been fenced off and over the next nine hours it was levelled, causing more than 140 million baht (£1.9m) damage to the small businesses that had sprung up on it. News footage of the destruction caused a public uproar. Prime minister Thaksin paid a flying visit and vowed to punish those responsible. It was eventually established that only weeks earlier the land had been sold to Chuwit, who had lodged a planning application to build a five-star hotel.
AMLO's chief sighs. "Chuwit was charged for the demolition. Thailand's 'dark influences' are devious and manipulative people," he says. "Did you know that I went to the same Christian school as our prime minister? We were both educated by white-robed brothers. We will make Thailand cleaner than clean."
Outside the AMLO office, we hail a taxi and the driver starts chatting about Chuwit. "I'll vote for him for sure. He's not the straightest guy in the world but we are sick of paying off the police and politicians."
After a morning's calling, we reach Chuwit on his mobile phone and put it to him that the Thai government is alleging that his police bribery and abduction stories are concoctions intended to obscure his role in the Sukhumvit Square demolition. Chuwit agrees to meet us at one of Bangkok's plushest new hotels, a stone's throw from the square.
Guarded by familiar cement lions, the Davis hotel is low-lit, understated and geometric. Inside the lobby, Chuwit is waiting, twiddling with a silver-topped cane. "This was my dream," he says. "The flagship of my legitimate empire. I spent two billion baht [£27.5m] building this hotel. My bid to be respectable. Anyhow." Chuwit closes his eyes. "You wanted to talk about Sukhumvit Square."
Chuwit denies that he did anything wrong. "Yes, I bought Sukhumvit Square in December 2002. I paid 500 million baht [£6.9m] for the plot and I wanted to build another hotel. But the land was occupied with squatters."
Chuwit claims that the Royal Thai Police offered to clear the site for him in return for a bribe. "These officers received 10 million baht [£137,500]. But when they started to get the blame in the newspapers, a big officer rang and said, 'Paytwo million baht [£27,500] or we will arrest you for the demolition.' I told him, 'No. You did the demolition. And I paid you. No more money.' He said: 'The wind, cloud and rain are coming. We will not help you.'"
Chuwit was arrested in May 2003. When he appeared in court, he argued that even though there was a police station only 200m away from Sukhumvit Square, no officers intervened for nine hours. However, he was held on remand for a month and, while in jail, was further charged with pimping underaged girls and procuring women for sex. One week after he was released on bail, Major General Peeraphan Prempooti, of AMLO, began to freeze his accounts.
Chuwit drums his cane on the floor. "After I got out of jail, I was furious and started to name names. I told the Thai people who took bribes and who got sex for free. Now the government accuses me of being a 'dark influence'. But here, look." He shows us a letter he has just received from AMLO. "Among the accounts they froze are my two-year-old son's and my wife's. They had 2,100 baht [£29] in them. They are just out to get me."
Shortly after Chuwit's accounts were suspended, his clubs were raided. He says: "The police had sex with my girls and then came out waving their used condoms in the air, shouting, 'Mr Chuwit, you're the bad guy. You're a pimp. Your girls are whores and they will be prosecuted. Here is the evidence.'"
Although General Sant defended the unconventional operation, Wuthipong Chaisaeng, a Thai MP and spokesman for the House Committee on Police Affairs, said, "Many of us see the raids [on Chuwit] as a discriminatory enforcement of the law."
A phone rings and Chuwit scrabbles in his pockets. "I'm sorry. I have to go to Hat Yai now [a town in the southern Gulf of Thailand] to raise more political support." He mulls over an idea. "Everything I have done is about transparency. So I have made a decision. Go to Copa Cabana and unlock any door you like."
The Copa's front-of-house manager is waiting for us at the blacked-out front doors and introduces himself as Khun Kom Sa - "Mr Handsome". He leads us over to the "fishbowl", a large window behind which sit young Thai women in evening dresses. Forty pairs of heavily made-up eyes swivel in our direction. "Those girls on the left, with numbered badges but no stars, are 1,700 baht [£23] for two hours," says Mr Handsome. "The ones on the right with stars and numbered badges are 1,900 baht [£26]." What do the girls do, we ask. Mr Handsome looks bemused. "Have sex, of course."
Beside the "fishbowl" is a cash desk. "Money or credit before 10.30pm," says Mr Handsome. "After 10.30pm, cash only." Where are the rooms, we ask. He leads us down a carpeted corridor. It could easily be a five-star hotel. A door is ajar on the right and inside we see a woman in a towel sitting on a bed watching television. A man's hand reaches out and pulls her back by the shoulder. Another door opens on the left. Two maids knot dirty sheets and throw an empty tube of lube into a bulging binbag. A woman in a powder-blue strapless evening dress sways towards us, her glass-heeled stilettos in one hand and a clutch bag in another.
We pick a door, stopping at room 2157. We'd like to go in here, we say. Mr Handsome laughs and knocks. He pushes the door open and sitting on the bed are two girls in fluffy white towels. The bed-sheets are pulled back. The bath is draining. The customer is gone. We perch on the bed between May and Ay, and ask Mr Handsome to leave us alone.
May explains how she ended up in Copa Cabana: "I used to be a hairdresser, but I got divorced and my business went bust. What I do now is just another job. I am not ashamed, but I cannot tell my mother. The money I earn helps pay for my sister's education."
What does May think of Chuwit's decision to tell all? "It's none of my business. But he's brave. We used to get a lot of police clients. They would never pay. They were called VIP guests. But Mr Chuwit would always make up the difference so that we were never out of pocket. I'm glad the police don't come any more." Ay nods: "No one would do this job unless they had to. It's tiring having to be nice all the time. Having to smile and make conversation. And then having to do it for free for the police. Mr Chuwit is an OK guy." We wonder if they would have told a different story if we had interviewed them outside Copa Cabana.
Mr Handsome is waiting for us at the cash desk and he takes us into a small office. "This is where we assess the newcomers. We never have a shortage of applications," he says. "Girls that do well are rewarded with gold jewellery. Those that turn up on time win bonuses. On a good night they take home 5,000 baht [£69]," he says. It's an attractive salary in a country where the poverty line is £14 a month.
Behind him on the walls are dozens of house rules. "You must wear nylons between 1pm and 8pm. You must not scratch your crotch [in public]. If you owe money, contact the company for a loan. Drug-takers will be sent to the police." At the staff entrance is a large board of clocking-out cards. Beside it is a poster for Chuwit's TTT party and a pile of newly printed campaign T-shirts with the slogan: "Stop The Government Corrupting Our Country Now!"
The newspapers are full of bad news. Two seers have picked up cosmic signs that Thailand's economy and government are in for a rough ride. One, the chairman of the International Astrology Association, says "the PM should watch his back", warning that "he has made enemies, executing drastic policies such as the anti-drugs campaign". A specialist in political astrology says the prime minister should brace himself for an "unexpected happening in March". So jittery is the country that prime minister Thaksin has had to issue a calming statement.
We try again to elicit comment on the bribery scandal from the Royal Thai Police. Lieutenant General Damrongsak Nilkhuha, Bangkok's metropolitan police commissioner, recently told one Thai newspaper that the police should not feel guilty for accepting bribes from Chuwit because such payments were only an expression of "closeness and sincerity". But the lieutenant general does not have time to explain his views to us. Instead, we try a more direct approach and take a cab into Soapland, toSutthisarn police station, whose officers raided Chuwit's clubs (and allegedly took hush money).
"Police for the people" reads the sign inside the station house. But the desk officer claims that there is no one qualified to talk to us: "There are no senior officers left here. Our first superintendent walked after Chuwit began to speak. Colonel Varanvas has been transferred. Our new boss is on sick leave and, between you and me, he won't last another fortnight."
As we leave, the justice ministry calls to say that its permanent secretary is willing to be interviewed. Somchai Wongsawat has overall responsibility for investigating the allegations made by Chuwit, as well as most of those levelled against Chuwit by the police. He is also the prime minister's brother-in-law.
At his office on the 38th floor of a tower block, Somchai is waiting at the end of a long conference table. "Mr Chuwit is not a big deal," he says, firmly, not wanting to discuss the details of the ongoing investigations. "His case is distracting attention from our campaign against 'dark influences'. All people outside the law will be punished, whether the police or Mr Chuwit." China teacups arrive, embossed with golden scales of justice. A silent stenographer in a petrol blue suit records all that is said.
Like AMLO's secretary-general, Somchai Wongsawat insists that it is the prime minister who is reforming society: "Our current government had been thinking about the issue of corruption for many months before Mr Chuwit came along. Our prime minister is trying to eradicate the big problems of the past. It is the prime minister who is making the difference. Transforming Thailand into a developed nation."
We drop 38 floors back down to street level and hail a taxi. The traffic snarls into a jam. The cabbie huffs and puffs. "Everyone got their wages this week and so they are out collecting again," he says, pointing ahead to police officers in chocolate-brown uniforms, their penalty notice books fluttering in the breeze. One hundred baht extracted here, 100 baht squeezed from there. Every driver forced to pay off the Royal Thai Police. "Yuen moo, yuen maew," the taxi driver sighs, summing up the quid pro quo happening ahead of us. "You give me a pig, I'll give you a cat." The Royal Thai Police serve the people and the people demonstrate their gratitude.
Facts are hard to come by in the Chuwit saga. There are his allegations that caused a herd of policemen to fall on their swords. And then there are the government's counterclaims that show Chuwit as a cut-throat property speculator. Some facts may be established when the welter of charges surrounding Chuwit eventually come to a head in court in three or possibly four years' time. But it is not facts that will decide the forthcoming elections. It is money.
The pimp calls. "Meet me at home." We expect a white stucco mansion, but he lives in the penthouse of a 15-storey block behind Soapland's Tesco-Lotus supermarket. The only other tenants are girls. This is Chuwit's Sea Of Love.
In a small office, he is slumped before a map of the world. "Today I have received another letter from the money-laundering people," he says. "More of my assets frozen. I'm in court on Monday. What will my children and wife do? I will soon have nothing in the bank.
"In July, I began to talk because I was getting angry with the bigots. The more I talked, the more they lied. I became possessed. I lost control and said too much. Now I feel like I'm walking in a desert. I can see a mirage: success in the polls, me the respected politician."
This doesn't sound like the ebullient entrepreneur who promised to avenge the Thai people. Surrounded by piles of well-leafed porn magazines and shelves of books on the world's hippest hotels, Chuwit seems like an adolescent: angry, impetuous and vulnerable.
He says: "In Hat Yai yesterday, when I met the local officials, all they wanted from me was money. Three million baht [£41,000] before they would even shake my hand or support my party. What am I doing? Having to pay all over again."
How could this arch practitioner of paying backhanders have ignored the fact that the practice is just as deep-rooted in the Thai electoral system? Until Thailand reformed the way it votes in 1997, it was commonplace for aspirant politicians to staple banknotes to election leaflets; it is a tradition that is proving difficult to eradicate. During the country's first ever poll in 2000 to elect members to its parliament's upper house, 40% of newly appointed senators were disqualified for electoral fraud. During the 2001 general election that brought Thaksin to power, politicians campaigning in 62 of the 400 constituencies were accused of vote-buying.
It takes bottomless wealth and uncommon resilience to succeed in Thailand's political arena. And although Chuwit still claims that he will field candidates in key provinces in the forthcoming provincial elections, he is already exhausted and out of pocket - his prized Davis hotel was quietly placed on the market on December 28 last year.
Chuwit turns off the main light and switches on an Anglepoise. The hustler's face is greasy in the golden glow and he no longer resembles the people's champion. "I am just a little man," he says quietly. "With me or without me, it's always going to be the same."
© Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, 2004
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Thai Girls : Meet Active Thai Girls
Posted on: 7:20 pm on Feb. 29, 2004
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