Latest update February 6th, 2025 7:27 AM
Glaring errors
In raw, street-level terms, what does that translate to? That embarrassing ‘poke-in-the-eye and egg on the face’ putdown embedded through the “glaring errors” present in the government’s no-confidence motion filing? Aside from the embarrassment, there is a studied humiliation, and a rather public one, that courses through that judicial reprimand.
For the pejorative (and it certainly rises to that) to be aimed at some low-level functionary in a backwater government department is one thing; but when such a public corrective is directed at the office of the Attorney General, and by any fair reasoning, the Chief Legal Officer of the land himself, then it is a different story. For regardless of which subordinate is incompetent, or unfamiliar and untrained, (or possibly undermining) the verbal sortie is the property of the Honorable Attorney General. It belongs to him. He owns it. And thus it crumbles under his watch. After all, the head is the one, rightly or wrongly, that has to take the blame, and be the fall guy, for all the failures of all the juniors below. It is just the way of the world and the way things work. The words of long-ago, US President Harry Truman are timely: the buck stops here. Sometimes, it not just escalates and then takes up residence at the top. It blows up too. And does not care who is nearby; or who gets taken down.
And taken down it is, and by that which can only be construed as a powerful broadside: succinct but sharp. Because of this most recent development, there has to be some level of curiosity, and not unfairly, as to whether the ripples of “glaring errors” do not capture older developments and examples that were the work product of that same Attorney General’s office. For a while now, since the arrival of this government, its success record in the courts has been far and apart, and a mostly checkered one. It might have been procedural errors, or absentee advocacy, or a string of similar oversights that have contributed to one loss after another by the government in very sensitive and pivotal cases brought before the courts.
Many citizens, including those inclined to be charitable and generous to the government, have pondered as to whether these failures and losses could be traceable to either incompetence, or lack of knowledge and requisite expertise, or the appropriate guiding hands, or the need for more seasoned leadership. The conclusions were that it could be some combination of all of those, but there was one more troubling factor that has been articulated from time to time. It is that the government’s not infrequent judicial defeats furnish case studies in sloppiness, appalling sloppiness that should be subject to the most unsparing criticism.
That being said, and however accurate or inaccurate that may prove to be, it still has to be discerned and admitted that the government’s representatives have not put their best foot forward and made robust and unimpeachable appearances, both on paper and in person. This has been true in more than lesser instances, and whether emanating from the Attorney General’s office or that of some other government realm. Clearly, something is wrong; and just as clearly this level of slippage cannot neither be condoned nor be allowed to continue. Someone should be made to fall on his or her sword to atone for this appalling development, and if only for face-saving purposes. The greater lesson and learning, however, would be that these mistakes are not allowed to recur.
While all of the above could be pertinent and is very real, the cynical in the midst may latch on to this latest example of an egregious breach, or to use the words of the Court of Appeals, a submission laced with “glaring errors” as a cunning government ploy. To state unambiguously, the thinking might be that the “glaring errors” were deliberate, in a delaying game to extend the clock.
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