LSB calls on JSC to publicise its Rules of Proce

  • Worried that JSC abuses grey area to violate principles
  • JSC allegedly relies on institutional memory to conduct its business

TEFO PHEAGE

The Law Society of Botswana (LSB) has called on the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to promulgate rules of procedure to regulate its proceedings rather than to rely on fluid and uncertain institutional memory.

“Failure to promulgate regulations after so many years of existence is seen as regressive and a deliberate ploy to violate due process behind regulating its own procedure,” LSB says in a letter to the JSC.

It draws attention a constitutional provision that empowers the JSC to regulate its own procedure, calling on the JSC to desist from using the grey area as a licence to abandon due process and the rule of law.

For this LSB cites the manner in which the delimitation commission was appointed without its input and expresses the view that the JSC failed to uphold the rule of law and due process in that instance.

“The above we raised in a quarrel between the JSC and the LSB over the manner in which the delimitation commission was appointed by the JSC,” says LSB. “The LSB, which is enjoined through Section 59 (c) of the Legal Practitioners Act to assist the government in matters of administration and practice of the law, felt sidelined in the entire process of the appointment of the commission.”

The JSC had invited LSB to contribute to the process but published the names of the appointed members of the commission when LSB was still preparing to make its submission.

LSB says it was given less than 24 hours to make its submission, a development it considers disturbing.