The decision of the Administrative Court in the case of Khunying Jaruvan Maintaka seems to put a conclusive end to a remarkable tenure as Auditor-General. Or perhaps not.

Appointed in 2003 to a position that can be held for a non-renewable term of 5 years only, Khunying Jaruvan has shown remarkable tenacity for her job. She has overcome a Constitutional Court ruling that her original appointment was unconstitutional; she has passed 2 retirement deadlines; she has had her salary stopped and the locks on her office have been changed on her; she has joined calls for royal intervention in deposing a Prime Minister while supposedly serving the government of that Prime Minister, and she has got her way in reconstituting committees, re-jigging the law so she can more easily nail those she thinks are malefactors, and fighting off allegations of nepotism in appointing her son as her secretary at 30,000 baht of government pay a month. And Ying Pet, as she is affectionately known in the media (at least I think calling someone ‘duck’ is affectionate), also wrestles a mean microphone.

This is not sheer stubborn bloody-mindedness, she says. On the contrary, she fears that if her fingernails are ever successfully pried from the door jambs of the Office of the Auditor-General, she will be sued for dereliction of the duties that she once relinquished to her successor but then decided to seize back.

But, alas, the court says her days of general auditing are up. Her argument for staying on beyond her term of office, her two retirement deadlines and any last shred of decency was a piece of nonsense, said the court. “It would mean an auditor-general who is dead, has resigned, is running in an election to be an MP or senator, or has become a drug addict would still be able to carry on working as auditor-general,” according to the verdict of Chief Judge Somchai Wattanakarun.

While a superficial reading would conclude that it is time for Khunying Jaruvan to retire quietly to her suspiciously well-appointed multi-million baht mansion in Pak Kret, more seasoned observers believe that the Court was in fact leaving a carefully crafted loophole for the Khunying to slip through.

While there is no known previous case of serving Auditors-General who have been dead, resigned or drug-addicted, examples abound elsewhere in the civil service.

The state universities, for example, still employ dozens of professors who resigned or retired long ago but whose expertise is thought to be so valuable that they have been allowed to continue boring the pants off generations of students with their mildewed lecture notes on theories that were up-to-date when they got their masters from some mid-western diploma mill in the 1950s.

Also, the otherwise inexplicable behaviour of many government officials is often ascribed to the influence of a variety of psychotropic substances. For example, the ability of high-ranking military officers to say one thing (such as calling for national reconciliation) and do the opposite (such as the vindictive demotions of subordinate officers with loyalty to the wrong class or clique) is reportedly a well-known effect of a certain substance that is said to be widely abused in military circles.

And the staffing figures for a number of army units appear to exceed the number of actual warm bodies, often by an order of magnitude. While some of this shortfall of phantom soldiers can be traced to fictitious names that have never existed but who still somehow collect their pay every month, many others are known to be fallen heroes whose names were never removed from the rolls. But who still draw salaries, of course.

But perhaps the most telling precedent is that of Quartermaster Sgt. Arwuth Haipainai, who, if he had not died in 1987 while serving a term in military prison for methamphetamine addiction, would be well past retirement age today. Dead, retired and addicted, he still manages to play an important role in military affairs.

‘He’s very important to the Army,’ explained an officer who asked not to be named. ‘Who else could we blame every time the press find out about weapons going missing?’

About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).