Sex, sewers spice up race to be Bangkok governor

By Nirmal Ghosh
August 9, 2004

He Had been working a market from 6am that morning, under a steady monsoon drizzle.

Now he met me in his office with the big wooden model sailing yachts, two of them, and a huge poster of himself right next to his desk, picturing him with tie flying, possibly in a studio-induced wind, hands spread, decisive and action-oriented.

Behind his desk Chuwit Kamolvisit, 41 - who had himself photographed by the media last year in a jacuzzi with three bikini-clad girls - looked none the worse for wear from the hectic campaign for the post of Bangkok governor. The election will be on Aug 29.

The once-small real estate businessman has clawed his way into the big time with astute and even brutally direct real estate deals, and the skills of young girls either in desperate need of or in thrall to cash, or both.

At one time, just one of his three upscale massage parlours was netting a million baht (S$42,000) a day, he told me last year, at the height of his propaganda war with the police he said he had paid millions to in order to run his businesses.

I asked him last week whether he found the campaign tiring.

He smiled broadly. 'No problem,' he said.

'I get plenty of food, plenty of sex, plenty of sleep,' he said, ticking the points off on his fingers.

I then barrelled across town in a tuk tuk to catch up with one of his strongest rivals, the Democrat Party's Mr Apirak Kosayothin. I found him recording a TV discussion in the boardroom of the Bangkok Post. The slight, almost boyish 43-year-old, whose hair is now beginning to show silver-grey highlights, told me: 'Campaigning is fun.'

His right hand was in a bandage with the finger in an alloy splint - he had broken it when he tripped during a campaign walkabout, one of his assistants said. After a quick lunch Mr Apirak went on a walk to the neighbouring market.

The Post is housed at the edge of Klong Toey, not the most affluent of the capital's neighbourhoods, and after the previous night's rain, the gutters had backed up and there was a 1.5m-wide, 15cm-deep deep unhealthy-looking strip of grey and brown water separating road and pavement.

We stepped gingerly over strategically placed stones and Mr Apirak and his entourage wound their way through the stalls handing out fliers.

And then Mr Apirak met 51-year-old Kulchalee Worrapluekdeekul. For people like Ms Kulchalee, the polite, roundabout niceties of Thai high society cut little ice. A big strong woman, she lives in Klong Toey and twice a week, slogs at dawn to cook and package snacks to sell at the pavement market.

She makes around 1,400 baht a week, but pays 240 for market space. When Mr Apirak extended a flier in her direction, she came straight to the point.

'We need something done about this' she said, pointing to the water eddying near her feet. 'Can you do something?' she demanded. 'It stinks!'

Harvard-schooled Mr Apirak, who has spent most of recent years selling mobile phone services, pizzas and potato chips - developing a reputation for innovative marketing - peered at the water and nodded. 'If I become governor, I will definitely sort things like this out,' he told her.

After Mr Apirak left I spoke to Ms Kulchalee.

I asked which other candidates she had met, and she mentioned three, including another front runner, Ms Pavena Hongsakula, the polished former-senator who runs the Pavena Foundation which rescues and cares for victims of child abuse and prostitution rackets. Ms Pavena, 55, has a popular mass base among the lower middle class, and the tacit backing of the ruling Thai Rak Thai party.

She is not as aggressive as the other 16-odd candidates. Her posters are few and far between, and she has avoided public panel discussions and debates. She has run for governor once before and lost, but the Democrat Party is not discounting her.

She gets on well with people on the street. Other non-governmental organisations say her work is more about propaganda than helping people. But in her office one day, I saw a woman stumble in crying - she had just been beaten by her husband, and had come straight to Ms Pavena.

Other candidates considered formidable are former police captain Chalerm Yoobamrung, 56; and former governor of Bangkok Bhichit Rattakul, 58.

'I think Apirak seems to be the kind of man who would do a good job,' Ms Kulchalee said. 'I think I'll vote for him. He seems a good person.'

As I thanked her, she pressed a couple of hunks of her 10-baht banana cake on me free of charge, saying 'Please take, please take, they're good!'

They were, and I resolved to visit her again, perhaps next monsoon, just to check if the new governor has solved the drainage problem.

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