Like a cornered patsy running into a crowded street from a back alley to escape his attackers, Chuwit then cried "bribery" long and loud. "Bribery" as in the 20 million baht per month he claimed to have been paying police to allow him to operate the high-end brothels that helped make his fortune. Weeping like a schoolgirl for the cameras, Chuwit actually seemed to convince many of the authentic nature of his public display. Not the only merchant of lascivious lechery in the land of leering loose-limbed ignorant occidentals, but the only one treated so unfairly by the boys in brown...

This ongoing drama has created a strange pathos for Chuwit (or perhaps expectations of future comic relief) in the forgiving hearts of Thais and he seems to have a legitimate shot at the governor's seat. This is the official endorsement from Pistonhips for the peddler prince of prurience. The potential for farce is just too irresistible. In the past, a long line of Thai politicians have called news conferences that are held in front of garish neon signs that adorn Bangkok's handful of red light districts, so they can announce with a straight face that there...simply...is...no...prostitution...in...Thailand. It's illegal, so it can't exist.

"My utterance, nay the very entity-unto-myself, crackling energy of almightiness surrounding my proclamation supercedes all else, even reality and makes this structure, these scarred and haggard faces with no names, these broken lives and parasitic exploitative fortunes made for others, all a twisted figment of the collective imagination."

Maybe the same far-removed, isolated and privileged thinking that can't comprehend why anyone would take the merest notice at the subtle and nuanced debacle that launched Chuwit into the spotlight in the first place. Ironically it has also provided him with a great deal of publicity and probably increased his chance of winning this race.

The prospect of Chuwit standing proud, true and tall and making those unctuous denials is something that somehow makes him the most appropriate person for the job. Having made billions off that which doesn't exist, having failed to liquidate that which he used to exploit that which is not an issue, now in charge of the city that is free from that which never lined his pockets with the misery of others. "The Pimp Governor of Bangkok" somehow has a nice artificial ring to it. Go Chuwit!!! (We expect cut-rate massages in the ethereal nether world of non-existent bordellos once you assume your rightful position.)

Chalerm Yubamrung

Another candidate with ties to Thaksin (and in fact a member of the ruling Thai Rak Thai party) who is now playing down that connection. We're confident that were he elected there would be no strange revisionist history of whose logic only he understood and that allowed a renewed relationship with his old friend.