Top appeals judge in Thailand fails anticipated elevation to the country’s number one judicial position … Drug cases and anti-corruption decisions thwarted his career path …  From Alex Mitchell in Bangkok 

However, the next time a week-long “legal conference” is staged in either Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong or Bangkok, Sirichai won’t be there. He’s been sacked, or rather he’s fallen on his fountain pen after the Judicial Commission failed to endorse him as the country’s next Supreme Court president, the Oz equivalent of the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.

When the announcement was made that Sirichai had been overlooked for the top judicial post, the junta’s flunkeys invented for him a new non-job called “adviser to the Supreme Court president”. It was designed to calm the outbreak of alarm and anger among local law practitioners.

Sirichai turned it down saying that he was not the same as being president of the Supreme Court although the architects of the “adviser” role claimed that it was.

He also pointed out that the “adviser” post had been specially created for him and could have been declared constitutionally unlawful if it was ever challenged.

The highly regarded judge lost his bid to become Supremo Numero Uno when the junta-appointed commission voted 14-0 not to promote him to the post. The decision has been accompanied by rumours, gossip and “fake” news about the junta’s motives. 

The only tangible evidence came from Sirichai himself and confirmed by lawyers from Human Rights Watch.

They say that moves against him began when complaints arrived at military and police HQ about his Appeal Court decision to overturn the “no-billing” of three drug-dealing cases. 

He insisted that the defendants be prosecuted and this resulted in involving lengthy stretches in pokey. The Judicial Commission took the protests seriously and summonsed the judge to explain why had overturned the no-bill.

It was also reported that the commission heard evidence from parties who had been affected by his previous decisions. The outcome was his long-expected elevation to the Supreme Court’s presidency was blocked.

The judge had also infuriated sections of the corrupt political class when he knocked back their appeals against malfeasance convictions and confirmed their long sessions of porridge in Thailand’s horrendous jails.

At a formal farewell in Bangkok this week, all senior judges turned out to wish him well but there was a noticeable non-attendance by personnel from the military or the police. There were no (known) drug dealers in the gathering and just a light sprinkling of former MPs (trying to avoid the cameras).