Judiciary is polarized
Monitor Editor | Wednesday August 17, 2016 15:57
For decades of independence, Botswana was hailed as exemplary for maintaining peace and the independent Judiciary. There has been a shift, with divisions and polirasation of the Judiciary. This critical arm of governance finds itself in a precarious state arising from a simple thing as housing allowance.
Towards end of last year, it emerged that poor administration within the Administration of Justice (AoJ) led to some Judges being paid undue housing allowance. What could have been solved administratively however saw the powers that be playing politics, allowing others to pay back the money but opening criminal proceedings against four High Court Judges, leading their suspension.
This immediately spoke to acts of favouritism and victimisation of Justices at all levels. It will be recalled that some of the Industrial Court and Court of Appeal Judges were implicated in this housing allowance fiasco but they escaped scot-free. In fact, the Industrial Court embarked on an exercise to review its records in the payment of housing allowances in order to establish how many judges, if any were affected.
In response to Mmegi earlier this year, the Industrial Court said any overpayment of housing allowances made to any Judge of the Industrial Court on any period prior to the year 2015 has been duly recovered and to date no monies remain due and/or outstanding. Hence no Judge of the Industrial Court owes any monies as overpaid housing allowance.
All Judges who were affected by the overpayment of housing allowances and the court both mutually addressed the matter and successfully recovered all monies that were due. This is what could have happened at the High Court but alas!
Instead, the Chief Justice, Maruping Dibotelo reported the four Judges reported to the police, and were later suspended from office by President Ian Khama. The issue is now a subject of litigation. Colleagues and friends are now pitted against each other in this case. A plea by the suspended quartet for the Chief Justice to appoint foreign Judges to preside over their case fell on deaf ears.
The Chief Justice, it must be noted, is conflicted in the matter as he is cited in the litigation. How he is allowed to escape with this brazen conflict of interest, as a party to the proceedings in the cases launched by the suspended quartet is shocking. This is the type of Judiciary that we are dealing with. Things have fallen apart and the centre can no longer hold. Our Judiciary is polarised.
Today’s thought
“The danger is not, that the Judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day.”
- Joseph Story