Case closed

ONE OF the strangest chapters in this country’s history has been brought to a close with the decisions, by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and the Law Association respectively, that Chief Justice Ivor Archie will face no impeachment proceedings and the Law Association will not challenge the Prime Minister’s exercise of his discretion. But after such a long, drawn-out and unquestionably damaging affair, the public is entitled to be sceptical. Is the case closed? Or has it been adjourned to a date to be fixed? We hope the former.

Considerable time, effort and resources were devoted to this issue. It embroiled some of the most important organs of State in the process, diverting attention from critical matters. The Chief Justice’s accusers, though, felt the issues raised were important enough to merit a course of action which saw scarce financial resources dedicated to repeatedly considering, investigating, reporting, then ventilating, in far-reaching legal challenges, a cluster of matters deemed urgent enough to risk undermining the legal system as a whole.

Along the way, the court, in a separate ruling considering an allegation of bias raised against the Chief Justice stemming from the public airing of these matters against him, found those myriad issues “did not give rise to the level of cogency required to dislodge the presumption of impartiality of the Chief Justice when he sat on the appeals.” Such an assessment, coming from the Court of Appeal, became the writing on the wall. It was perhaps the moment at which it was clearest that pursuit of this matter would be akin to flogging a dead horse.

The notion this affair was purely the result of lawyers exercising patriotic impulses to defend the public interest was always implausible. Still, it was startling when a perceived political complexion emerged. The attribution of a political motive served to confirm public suspicion, present from day one, that more was in the mortar than the pestle.

What is tragic, however, is the fact that some may well have acted sincerely and with the best interest of the country at heart. Their fervour, however, was not well served by the drip-feed manner in which this issue was prolonged, the frequently intemperate rhetoric on all sides, troubling questions in relation to some of the evidence, and the aura of innuendo, insinuation, libellous speculation, and, ultimately, prejudice which quickly gathered in the absence of a compelling and concrete demonstration of wrong-doing, considering the overall context of housing allocation practices among all state officials.

The Prime Minister was eventually asked by the court to reconsider the matter apolitically. That directive underlined the need for a more mature conversation about constitutional reform of section 137.

Such a conversation is outstanding, though the more immediate concern now must be restoring lost confidence and healing rifts. Such remedial work is essential if the judiciary, the Law Association and the Cabinet are to focus on what really matters: justice.