I can’t even begin to imagine the magnitude of the embarrassment endured by the Attorney General Athalia Molokomme at this point in time. I ask myself, what is she saying to those she is free to confide in her deepest thoughts and emotions? Does she look them straight in the eye or she looks down in shame every time she has to converse with them?
Look, losing a court case is very normal and should therefore never attract any embarrassment or bring about any regrets. In every legal argument brought before the courts of law, it is very natural that one of the parties will become successful and the other will lose. The courts of law were brought about to do exactly that: decide and pronounce winners and losers. Presiding officers, that is, magistrates and Judges, are appointed to make legal sense of all the cases brought before them and take sides with parties that make plausible sense.
Legal practitioners who take their craft seriously and have regard for their integrity will tell you that a good lawyer is one who finds no shame in advising their client about zero chances of success in their case, if indeed no chances of success seem attainable. A good legal advisor will also not shy away from being sincere to you on the ramifications that may come your way in the event of an unsuccessful litigation. When it comes to leaders, great ones always strive to strike a balance between legalities and principle. Good leaders would rather make decisions that leave their integrity intact even where such decisions are legally acceptable. A good leader does not always fight to validate his decisions through the courts of law. He listens to that voice of reason within. He consults and abides by the wishes of the people and not necessarily by the dictates of law. Let us go back to Molokomme.
Here is a lady who is apparently so learned she qualified to be appointed the chief legal advisor to government. She is the one legal guru the country’s president has to rely on for legal advice. She is the one who is supposed to advise the President, or the Executive as they would want us to have it, on which matters deserve to be argued in court and which ones deserve no attention at all from the Executive. I really want to draw some sympathy for Molokomme but my heart is refusing to do so because all this embarrassment that she is currently going through is self-inflicted. She invited the embarrassment on herself. She had the opportunity to avoid all this embarrassment but she just chose to open the door and let it in. I mean, I don’t understand why Molokomme felt all the pressure to humiliate herself the way she did.
I don’t understand how she allowed Khama and his BDP to abuse her the way they did. Look, I write here all the time warning people against falling into the trap of being used by Khama and I expect those who are literate like Molokomme to read and understand my point. I can excuse illiterate people in far flung villages when they fall victim to Khama’s tricks because they have no access to my counsel. However, I cannot waste my sympathy on people like Molokomme who, even when warned, disregard the warning and jump straight into the hot coals. You don’t need to be a political science graduate to observe that the case that Molokomme advanced before the courts of law, bringing parliament business into a complete stop before it even moved one step forward, was not done in the best interests of the nation but solely to fight BDP’s internal wrangling.
How Molokomme allowed herself to be entangled in BDP wars really beats me. Someone please tell me just what was Athalia thinking? Molokomme wants us to believe she decided to fight parliament out of her own will without the influence of the BDP leadership. If some people have been fooled by her statement, let it be known I am not part of those people. It was always clear from the onset that Molokomme was working on instructions from the BDP, to protect the interests of the BDP leadership and not the nation. Her marathon to the High Court was not done out of national interest.
It was all about the interests of Khama. In fact, it is safe to say even Parks Tafa who didn’t hide the fact he was representing the BDP was not telling the truth. He was defending a part of the BDP. Our government was using tax payers money to fight BDP wars. The BDP money was used to fight a war within the party. Molokomme went to the High Court asking it to disregard the important and long held aspect of separation of powers between the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislature.
Three Judges dismissed her pleas and warned her that they are bound to respect the independence of the Legislature, as an equally important part of a democratic society. To prove that Molokomme was just fronting for the BDP, the party lawyer supported her arguments even though the BDP was lampooned together with opposition parties in the law suit. To further prove that the matter was all along a BDP baby, the party appealed Molokomme’s loss and she came on board to support them.
Now that a total of eight Judges have ruled that Molokomme and BDP’s demands are out of order, it is only proper that she shows remorse for abusing her office and that remorse can only come by way of her resigning from her position as Attorney General. She must resign for the undue pressure and embarrassment she caused her juniors who she pushed to the court to face the wrath of the Judges while she hid somewhere far away from the court chambers.
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