page_title: Chuwit Kamolvisit
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Chuwit Kamolvisit / Political career
caption_attribution_description: English: poster of Chuwit Kamolvisit ไทย: โปสเตอร์หาเสียง เลือกตั้งผู้ว่าราชการกรุงเทพมหานคร พ.ศ. 2551
context_page_description: Chuwit Kamolvisit is a controversial Thai politician who was once the country's biggest massage parlour owner, known as the "tub tycoon". After an arrest in 2003, he publicly claimed that he paid large bribes to many Thai police officers. He then sold some of his massage parlors, formed his own political party and unsuccessfully ran for Bangkok governor in August 2004. In 2005 he was elected for a four-year term to the Thai House of Representatives, but in 2006 the Constitutional Court removed him from parliament. In October 2008 he again ran for governor of Bangkok as an independent but was not elected. In the July 2011 general election his party won four seats in the House of Representatives. He used the pseudonym Davis Kamol on occasion.
context_section_description: In September 2003, Chuwit formed his own political party, called First Thai Nation. In April 2004 he announced that he was running for governor of Bangkok. He planned to spend about 20 million baht on his campaign, with corruption in the police and government as his main campaign topic. The Bangkok governor elections were held on 29 August 2004. Chuwit placed third, with some 300,000 votes, or about 16 percent of the vote.
  For the 2005 legislative elections, Chuwit merged his party with the conservative Chart Thai Party. He ran successfully as a party list candidate, becoming a member of parliament.
  In May 2005 he began hosting a weekly call-in radio show, during which he listened to complaints from the public.
  In January 2006, however, the Constitutional Court revoked his MP status. A candidate must be a member of a political party for at least 90 days before the general election and the court found that Chuwit had not joined Chart Thai in time.
  In 2008, he again declared his candidacy for governor of Bangkok. As was the case in 2004, he placed third. He admitted that his campaign may have suffered when he punched a reporter in the face for allegedly describing Chuwit as "unmanly".
  In May 2011 Chuwit formed a new political party, "Love Thailand" (Rak Prathetthai). In the 2011 Thai general election, the party won four seats in the House of Representatives. He had campaigned as a protest candidate and anti-corruption watchdog.
  In September 2012, the Bangkok Post published an audio recording of a lecture given by Chuwit at Hatyai University in southern Thailand. Chuwit spoke to the students about how Thai police make money from the sex industry, and the Post noted that the topic is "a subject not normally taught in university courses."
caption: Chuwit Kamolvisit on a poster for the Bangkok Governor Election 2008
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A20", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2008:09:18 15:50:36", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Tag 0x1001": "1600", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1200", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1410", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6395", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:09:18 15:50:36", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:09:18 15:50:36", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "245/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "97349/32768", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "349/500", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "173/32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1200", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1600", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "240000/31", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "800000/103", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}