This troubled Sunday morning, let’s view the continuing Chief Justice saga through the prism of Watergate.
On 22 July 1973, the headline on the front page of the Washington was ‘Nixon sees witch-hunt.’
At that time, the now famed Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were actively pursuing the implications of the Watergate break-in.
On 17 June 1972, a year before Nixon’s claim of witch-hunt, the Watergate scandal had begun when seven persons were arrested for a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex.
Richard Nixon was at the time the President of the United States. Although he was not directly involved in the break-in, he later directed an attempted cover-up of the break-in and related activities.
On 5 August 1974, a year after Nixon’s witch-hunt allegation, the United States Supreme Court decided that Nixon could not use executive privilege as a reason to refuse to release tape recordings made in his office, which were relevant to the criminal trials of his officials who were involved in Watergate.
Nixon then released the tapes, which revealed his abuse of power in attempting to interfere with the Unites States electoral and justice systems. In the face of certain impeachment, he resigned from the Presidency on 8 August 1974.
The combination of robust journalism, public pressure and deliberations of the Courts constitute the essential elements of a functioning democracy. As a result of the functioning of these elements, a little over two years from the original offence, Nixon was forced to resign.
Two of these elements are currently at work in connection with events surrounding the office of Chief Justice Ivor Archie. They are robust journalism and a court process, currently adjudicating upon action taken by the Law Association directed towards influencing whether section 137 of the Constitution should be triggered to impeach Archie.
The third element, public pressure, has been seriously undermined by the initial utterances of the Government, giving Archie a bligh regarding section 137 and therefore a feeling of invulnerability.
As the allegations against the Chief Justice mounted, the Attorney General asserted “nor have we seen anything to trigger 137 pursuant to the Constitution.” Section 137 is the constitutional provision relevant to impeachment of the Chief Justice.
This was a blunder of appeasement. The Attorney General should have kept the section 137 card close to his chest, thereby not giving the Chief Justice any feeling of invulnerability. The giving of that bligh may return to haunt the Government.
In a front page editorial on Wednesday last, the Trinidad Guardian made this statement: “We shouldn’t have reached this constitutional mess and, quite bluntly, we deserve better from those supposedly capable of holding high offices.”
However, here is the problem: We expect better from our rulers but most of so-called civil society routinely stays silent or appeases the blunders of the rulers, who blunder on until we have a “mess,” which is usually the result of appeasement and a lack of public pressure.
Meanwhile, the Chief Justice, through contrivances of sabbatical leave and arguably inflated and self-serving claims for sudden vacation leave, has been desperately seeking a fully paid break-out from the damaging controversies of his own making and for which he refuses to account—a refusal made easy by a lack of public pressure, except from a few of our fearless voices.
It is the appeasers among us who have enabled Archie, in the words of the editorial, “to choose silence and a convenient study break.” The blindness of those who make only tribally influenced assessments is also a significant factor in enabling dysfunctional acts in public life.
From his statement on Thursday last, it is not clear if the Prime Minister has now been driven to considering whether to trigger section 137 but the the behaviour of the Chief Justice certainly has his attention.
The outcome of the Law Association’s appeal, to be heard in a month’s time, against circumscription of its actions regarding the allegations surrounding the Chief Justice may be critical in assisting the Prime Minister in his decision making if he is still wavering.