Word: bangkok
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ELECTED. APIRAK KOSAYODHIN, 43, a member of Thailand's opposition Democrat Party; as governor of Bangkok. Apirak's victory is a blow to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's ruling party, whose favored candidate came in a distant second. Apirak, a former telecommunications executive, said his priority would be to tackle Bangkok's bad traffic and pollution...
...index down this year by nearly 25%, some fear the attempt to muzzle market buzz will only scare off institutional investors and make matters worse. "The problem is that information, the media, is too tightly controlled by the government," says Sompop Manarungsan, an economics professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, "so rumor fills the vacuum." Information yearns to be free...
Being governor of Bangkok is a formidable job: among other headaches, the candidate elected at the end of this month for a four-year term will have to deal with traffic problems, slums and pollution in the city of 10 million. Recent polls say the front runner is Pavena Hongsakula, a 55-year-old champion of women's rights who is promising to crack down on crime. Her leading rival is Chuwit Kamolvisit, 43, the city's massage-parlor king, whose massive pleasure palaces are said to have employed up to 2,000 women at any given time...
...massage services he claimed to have provided to officers over the years. He mounted an autobiographical one-man stage show (titled Chuwit, Alone and Shabby: Talk Show of the Year), published two books (The Golden Bath and My Confession: One Day I Will Commit Suicide) and turned himself into Bangkok's most vocal anticorruption advocate?much to the delight of many locals. Says Supaporn Jitsomboom, an insurance broker: "What he says about the police and corruption is true. Besides, he puts on a good show...
...underage girls. Chuwit said he never did so deliberately, and a court acquitted him in June after employees testified they had used forged IDs to get jobs in his massage parlors. If he wins the governorship, Chuwit promises to devote all his time to the task of cleaning up Bangkok?from cracking down on corruption to improving garbage collection?even forgoing the luxury of vacations abroad. He doesn't have much choice: a court is still trying the case involving the bars that were destroyed. "The judge," Chuwit admits, "says I can't leave town...