The Law As­so­ci­a­tion has writ­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urg­ing him to re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion not to im­peach Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie amid al­le­ga­tions raised by it.

In the let­ter signed by Pa­tri­cia Dindyal on be­half of Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dou­glas Mendes, SC, the as­so­ci­a­tion said, “While we ap­pre­ci­ate and re­spect the fact that the de­ci­sion whether to make a rep­re­sen­ta­tion un­der sec­tion 137 is yours to make, we nev­er­the­less think it in­cum­bent on us to draw to your at­ten­tion cer­tain method­olog­i­cal and an­a­lyt­i­cal flaws in the ad­vice giv­en to you which we fear may have led you in­to er­ror.”

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion asked the Prime Min­is­ter to re­view the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Queen’s Coun­sel Howard Stevens, par­tic­u­lar­ly about the Chief Jus­tice’s ques­tion­able ac­tions in rec­om­mend­ing per­sons for HDC homes.

The QC had stat­ed there was a lack of ev­i­dence to pur­sue fur­ther ac­tion but the law group dis­agreed.

“Mr Stevens ac­cept­ed that there was ev­i­dence that the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice had “gone fur­ther than mere­ly putting for­ward names for con­sid­er­a­tion” and in­deed had en­list­ed the as­sis­tance of a friend to “to in­ter­vene/seek favourable con­sid­er­a­tion on be­half of two ap­pli­cants,” said the as­so­ci­a­tion in the let­ter.

It con­tin­ued,” The ques­tion on which Mr Stevens was there­fore re­quired to ad­vise you was whether such con­duct amounts to mis­be­hav­iour un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion. We are dis­sat­is­fied with the an­swer which you were ad­vised to give.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so not­ed the QC’s stance con­cern­ing al­leged com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Chief Jus­tice and the Prime Min­is­ter con­cern­ing the HDC ap­pli­ca­tion.

The QC said had there been such a com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the two, his ad­vice would dif­fer.

QC Stevens gave his ad­vice on the be­lief that there was no such ex­change.

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion in its let­ter, said both men’s re­sponse to this al­le­ga­tion still left lin­ger­ing clouds over their of­fices which would be solved by the tri­bunal.

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s let­ter end­ed with it ask­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to re­con­sid­er.

“Re­spect­ful­ly, Prime Min­is­ter, it can­not be that the im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which the Con­sti­tu­tion im­pos­es on you un­der sec­tion 137 to hold the Chief Jus­tice to ac­count, lim­its you to such a pas­sive role. Where se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions are made against the Chief Jus­tice by a mem­ber of the pub­lic, who, like the As­so­ci­a­tion, has no pow­er to com­pel any­one to give ev­i­dence, sure­ly it is in­cum­bent on you to en­gage in some lev­el of en­quiry of your own, such as your of­fice would per­mit.”