To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The at­tor­neys who at­tend­ed and vot­ed at the meet­ing of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion have had their say, the ma­jor­i­ty say­ing they have no con­fi­dence in At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie. And that was their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right so to do. As could be ex­pect­ed and as is rea­son­able and is his right to do, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning will at­tach lit­tle im­por­tance to the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion.

So too will he not be im­pressed by the ma­jor­i­ty vot­ing against his AG on the oth­er mo­tions al­leg­ing in­ter­fer­ence by Mr Je­re­mie in pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions to suit his po­lit­i­cal bias and his al­leged threat to the in­de­pen­dence of the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. Be­ing con­duct­ed away from the pub­lic eye and ears, this news­pa­per is not in a po­si­tion to judge whether the ar­gu­ments mar­shalled for and against the mo­tions had mer­it and were vig­or­ous­ly and sub­stan­tial­ly ar­gued.

We could how­ev­er re­port, as we did, that Se­nior Coun­sel and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal, some­one who has gained cred­i­bil­i­ty through her pub­lic ut­ter­ances and po­si­tions tak­en on sev­er­al na­tion­al is­sues over many years, said on leav­ing the Hall of Jus­tice meet­ing that there was not suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence and strength of ar­gu­ment made to war­rant a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against AG Je­re­mie. Enough, she said, to cen­sure the AG but cer­tain­ly not strong enough rea­son to say de­fin­i­tive­ly that he should go be­cause the le­gal body had no con­fi­dence in him.

At the end of the meet­ing, pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Mar­tin Daly, SC, said as far as the law body is con­cerned, hav­ing ar­gued and vot­ed one way and the oth­er, that was the end of that. And that is how it should be; it cer­tain­ly can­not be that the as­so­ci­a­tion would now em­bark on a de­lib­er­ate path to have AG Je­re­mie re­moved from of­fice, even if that were pos­si­ble. If it were oth­er­wise then it would be up not on­ly to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion but any rel­a­tive­ly co­her­ent group to vote an AG out of of­fice, or at min­i­mum se­vere­ly dam­age the cred­i­bil­i­ty of an AG to ren­der him or her im­po­tent in the face of the se­ri­ous chal­lenges of the job. That would not be democ­ra­cy but rather would give li­cence to spe­cial groups to seek nar­row self-in­ter­ests in mat­ters such as the ap­point­ment and func­tion­ing of the Gov­ern­ment's ma­jor le­gal ad­vis­er.

Cer­tain­ly such pow­er rests with the larg­er body and sov­er­eign peo­ple of a state and not with the law body or any oth­er such mi­nor­i­ty group.

Nonethe­less, the at­tor­neys' body has every right to ex­press views on such mat­ters as it be­lieves them to be ap­pro­pri­ate. It is a pity though that the ar­gu­ments are not made be­fore the bar of pub­lic opin­ion to al­low cit­i­zens to judge the mer­its and de­mer­its of the con­tentions and al­so to be able to size-up whether the at­tor­neys are peo­ple of sub­stance and not giv­en to spite and/or whim­sy.

Of course there are the usu­al ac­cu­sa­tions against dif­fer­ent sides of the at­tor­neys' body that al­lege po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est and af­fil­i­a­tion. That can­not be helped giv­en the al­most nat­ur­al in­cli­na­tion of lawyers to pol­i­tics, much in their train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing to do with gov­er­nance and pub­lic jus­tice is­sues. It seems though that while Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning would be with­in his bounds not to be im­pressed with the con­tentions against AG Je­re­mie, and while Mr Je­re­mie him­self will re­main un­moved by the ma­jor­i­ty vote of the as­so­ci­a­tion, they should both be qui­et­ly at­ten­tive to in­creas­ing pub­lic opin­ion about their ex­er­cise of pow­er and al­leged am­bi­tions to con­trol in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions of the State.