To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

In his time as a colum­nist with this news­pa­per, at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan was a voice of even-hand­ed calm, even when he cham­pi­oned his caus­es and con­cerns pas­sion­ate­ly. As the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Ram­lo­gan will have to be even more care­ful to bal­ance his thoughts and words now that he has been el­e­vat­ed from pop­u­lar le­gal de­fend­er of the down­trod­den to rep­re­sent­ing the no­blest in­ter­ests of the law on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment. It was re­as­sur­ing, then, to note that the new AG took the clear­est line of law and pro­to­col in de­clin­ing any rep­re­sen­ta­tions made to his of­fice to in­ter­vene in the mat­ter of Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son's ex­tra­di­tion or­der, which is now be­fore the Privy Coun­cil. This was the cor­rect de­ci­sion to make and a clear no-brain­er for a le­gal mind of Ram­lo­gan's qual­i­ty.

It was, fur­ther, the cor­rect po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion to take on a mat­ter that reach­es back to the first tenure of the UNC in gov­ern­ment and the trou­ble­some rev­e­la­tions and al­le­ga­tions that came to light in the re­view of the Pi­ar­co Air­port up­grade. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was en­tire­ly cor­rect to note that it would be "pre­ma­ture and pre-emp­tive" to in­ter­vene in the le­gal process that is un­der­way, but it re­mains un­clear whether there is a point be­yond the Privy Coun­cil's rul­ing on the mat­ter in which the AG might in­ter­vene. Ram­lo­gan may have felt it nec­es­sary to bal­ance the firm­ness of his de­nial with some in­di­ca­tions that his of­fice re­mained open to pub­lic en­treaties, but to sug­gest that he re­mained "open to re­ceive rep­re­sen­ta­tion" from Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son's at­tor­neys is to in­di­cate a will­ing­ness to in­volve the State and his of­fice in the very un­usu­al le­gal ma­noeu­vres that would be re­quired to en­gage in a Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion.

That state­ment is com­pound­ed by his ap­par­ent caveat that he would not be­come in­volved in the mat­ter "at this stage." Even though it is the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al who must sign each ex­tra­di­tion war­rant, once the ex­tra­di­tion is ruled on by the Privy Coun­cil, there would be lit­tle that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al could do with­in the rule of law to in­ter­vene in the de­ci­sion. The re­gion has borne very re­cent wit­ness to the dead­ly and dis­as­trous con­se­quences of the at­tempt by Ja­maican politi­cians to in­ter­vene in an ex­tra­di­tion mat­ter. Giv­en the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of this mat­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­lo­gan will have to be care­ful to phrase his state­ments in ac­cor­dance with the strictest read­ings of the rule of law and the al­lowances of the pro­to­cols that ap­ply to his new post.

This will be par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant in mat­ters like the case of Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son, who were known to be par­ty fi­nanciers of the UNC in its first suc­cess­ful cam­paign for gov­ern­ment. The tim­ing of the Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son mat­ter is like­ly to be on­ly the tip of the Pi­ar­co Air­port le­gal ice­berg that's now float­ing dan­ger­ous­ly in­to the path of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. This was a mat­ter that vis­it­ed con­sid­er­able em­bar­rass­ment on UNC sup­port­ers and pro­vid­ed the first fault­lines in the par­ty's lead­er­ship struc­ture a decade ago. It is not a mat­ter that the UNC of to­day would wel­come, but it may well be the luck of the po­lit­i­cal draw that puts the Gov­ern­ment of 2010 in place to pros­e­cute the fail­ings of the Gov­ern­ment of 1995.

In his state­ment at Fri­day's post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­spond­ed to ear­ly ques­tions on this is­sue with ad­mirable di­rect­ness. "The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is com­mit­ted to the rule of law and equal­i­ty of treat­ment be­fore the law," Ram­lo­gan said.

"Our po­si­tion is that the rule of law must be al­lowed to pre­vail and these are mat­ters for the courts to de­cide." But it won't on­ly be the op­po­si­tion that will be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to how the rul­ing par­ty man­ages this po­lit­i­cal peb­ble in its boot. The vot­ing pub­lic who ac­cept­ed not just the specifics but the spir­it of their cam­paign promis­es will ex­pect the streams of the le­gal process to flow smooth­ly on­ward unim­ped­ed by the sul­lage of un­to­ward in­ter­ven­tions, even if the price is paid in po­lit­i­cal coin.