The out­come of two sig­nif­i­cant in­ves­ti­ga­tions — Email­gate and the mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions against sit­ting Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie — do not seem to sat­is­fy the pub­lic’s thirst for jus­tice, de­pend­ing on which side of the fence op­po­nents sit.

On one hand, the Prime Min­is­ter has point­ed sus­pi­cious fin­gers at key mem­bers of Op­po­si­tion, in­clud­ing its leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, al­though a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to claims of a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy based on a se­ries of pur­port­ed emails did not pro­duce enough ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute any­one.

Dr Row­ley and oth­er se­nior Gov­ern­ment mem­bers have re­lied on the ad­vice of the Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Joan Hon­ore-Paul to sup­port their con­tention that the au­then­tic­i­ty of the 31 pur­port­ed emails “can nei­ther be con­firmed nor de­nied.”

They have al­so made heavy weath­er of the fact that all but one of the peo­ple named in the email thread co-op­er­at­ed with po­lice by hand­ing over their de­vices for in­spec­tion, as well as the nine-month lapse be­fore a US Court ap­proved a war­rant to ex­am­ine the of­fice­hold­ers’ email ac­counts — by which time po­ten­tial­ly in­crim­i­nat­ing emails could have been delet­ed.

That be­ing said, the same ar­gu­ment can be used in the case of the Chief Jus­tice, who was ac­cused of seek­ing the as­sis­tance of the Prime Min­is­ter to fast-track State hous­ing for three peo­ple.

Nei­ther Chief Jus­tice Archie nor the Prime Min­is­ter ad­dressed the is­sue, nor co­op­er­at­ed with an in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to probe the case against this coun­try’s third-high­est of­fice hold­er.

In his cor­re­spon­dence to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter claims that he did not have any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Chief Jus­tice on the is­sue of HDC hous­ing.

How­ev­er, the Chief Jus­tice, in a pub­lic state­ment on De­cem­ber 2018, did not de­ny that he had rec­om­mend­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter the names of three peo­ple to ob­tain State hous­ing.

Even the in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice up­on which the Prime Min­is­ter re­lied sug­gest­ed that once in­for­ma­tion could be pro­vid­ed that there was com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Chief Jus­tice and the Prime Min­is­ter, the mat­ter could be re­opened for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion.

So where does the truth lie?

The com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­gat­ing the al­le­ga­tions should have been pro­vid­ed with all the nec­es­sary as­sis­tance so the coun­try could ben­e­fit from the out­come and pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice could be re­stored in some way.

These two cas­es not on­ly im­pact on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of per­sons in high of­fice but al­so can in­flu­ence or­di­nary cit­i­zens to make more in­formed de­ci­sions when next this coun­try heads to the polls.

The sce­nario in­volv­ing the Chief Jus­tice is even more sacro­sanct.

This is where jus­tice is dis­pensed and any cloud over the in­di­vid­ual ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for this process can lead to a far greater chasm in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.