As the guardians of democ­ra­cy, we were ex­treme­ly pleased to hear it said di­rect­ly from the mouth of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, that he re­mains com­mit­ted to the in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

Such mouthings in sup­port of an of­fice crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of our ju­rispru­dence, al­so au­gur well for our own in­de­pen­dence as mem­bers of this coun­try’s Fourth Es­tate, whose job it is to re­port fair­ly and fear­less­ly on is­sues of na­tion­al im­port, and to call a spade a spade even when like­ly to face at­tack.

One sim­mer­ing is­sue for which we have at­tract­ed crit­i­cism from the Prime Min­is­ter has been with re­spect to our analy­sis of the pub­lic im­broglio in­volv­ing him­self, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Chief Jus­tice and the DPP, who has warned of an im­pend­ing col­lapse of the ju­di­cial sys­tem amid re­port­ed staff short­ages and in­ad­e­quate con­di­tions at his of­fice.

While we hold no brief for the cur­rent hold­er of that of­fice, and in­deed are pre­pared to hold his per­for­mance up to pub­lic scruti­ny as need­ed, it has been trou­bling to see that of­fice em­broiled in a seem­ing­ly un­end­ing and deep­en­ing po­lit­i­cal con­flict in­volv­ing mem­bers of the cur­rent Ex­ec­u­tive.

It is against that back­drop that we are most heart­ened to hear the Prime Min­is­ter say his re­cent pub­lic ut­ter­ances about that of­fice were not in­tend­ed as any at­tack on the Of­fice, or the cur­rent of­fice hold­er.

How­ev­er, for any­one to seek to put blame on this news­pa­per for the wide­ly held view of dis­con­tent and dis­en­chant­ment be­tween the DPP’s Of­fice and three top of­fi­cials is, as the Prime Min­is­ter him­self likes to sug­gest, “play­ing farse with fool­ish­ness.”

The fact of the mat­ter is that of late, the Of­fice of the DPP has been brought in­to sig­nif­i­cant dis­re­pute, and chief among the crit­ics have been three of our most promi­nent pub­lic of­fi­cials.

The as­sault on the of­fice start­ed with the Prime Min­is­ter com­plain­ing open­ly that Gov­ern­ment was pay­ing mil­lions for an of­fice space the DPP’s Of­fice was still not us­ing, al­though se­cu­ri­ty ad­just­ments were made to it and Gov­ern­ment was bound to a three-year con­tract for the space.

It was not very long af­ter that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al launched a fur­ther of­fen­sive, say­ing the call by the DPP for more staff was “an un­sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­pla­na­tion for un­der-per­for­mance of the DPP.”

To add in­sult to in­jury, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie al­so re­leased a six-page state­ment ac­cus­ing Mr Gas­pard, among oth­er things, of fail­ing to sug­gest names and ap­praisals for pros­e­cu­tors to be pro­mot­ed and to in­di­cate the need to fill va­can­cies in his de­part­ment.

The Chief Jus­tice al­so dis­missed DPP Gas­pard’s view that at least 150 at­tor­neys were re­quired to su­per­vise the crim­i­nal courts, say­ing the sug­ges­tion was not vi­able.

We are al­so not sure whether ei­ther AG Regi­nald Ar­mour or CJ Archie would have been em­bold­ened to make such pub­lic re­spons­es to the DPP’s con­cerns, rather than pri­vate dis­cus­sions be­fit­ting of their of­fices, had the Prime Min­is­ter not al­so launched such a pub­lic rep­ri­mand of the DPP Of­fice him­self.

Based on the above, we wish to af­firm for our Prime Min­is­ter’s ben­e­fit that if any­one is in need of a pub­lic apol­o­gy over this most un­for­tu­nate and pub­lic episode, we think it would be the DPP.