AG's reply to Mmegi comment

| Tuesday March 16, 2010 00:00

In that piece, you allege that our department of public relations is 'unhelpful... intrasiegent', and that the head is 'an individual who has no interest whatsoever in releasing information even on the most mundane of issues'. The editor is of course entitled to his opinion on this matter, and is free to publish it wherever he may wish in his paper. I must, however, express my surprise at the fact that he chose to do this without sending a written appeal to me as head of the AGC, about the conduct of our PRO, or use the complaints procedure available on our website.

On a general note, it should be understood that my office for the most part does not primarily deal  with, or interact directly with the public in the same way that other government ministries and departments do. It deals primarily with prosecuting criminal cases, providing legal advice to government departments, including representing them in matters that often end up in court, some of which are settled out-of-court.

At any one point in time, these matters are at different stages of resolution, and information cannot always be freely shared with the public or the media. Many enquiries made to our PRO relate to cases that are sub-judice, and those which  the DPP has not as yet made a decision. We are not in a position to provide information on such cases, but where appropriate, we are quite willing to indicate the stage that has been reached.

The editor seems to know of 'other competent AGs in other countries who have managed to work out a way to release information of national interest'.  Where appropriate, I have published press releases on what I considered matters of national interest, but clearly, not the satisfaction of this particular editor.  Suffice to say that I do meet and interact some of my peers at regional and international  fora, and  I know that they face similar challenges;  it comes with the territory.

Justice, the editor concludes, 'needs to be manifestly be seen to be done.' Being in the daily business of justice, i could not agree more. All I can add is that the justice I am familiar with demands 'audi alteram patem' , which implies that one be given an opportunity to present one's side, before judgments are made, and  publicly announced.

In this particular instance, the opportunity to do so outside the public domain was not provided.I rest my case. 

Dr Athaliah MolokommeAttorney General

Editor's note: For a change we got the Attorney General to respond-what an achievement! We note that The AG is justifying outright incompetence of some of her staff not to respond to some routine questions from the media. To date we have questionnaires that have long been sent to her office as far back as November 2009, December, January and February 2010 and all these have not been responded to. In most of these questionnaires, we merely wanted to be appraised on the status of cases or merely following up on public pronouncements made by the AG. This is obviously not too difficult to ask. The Attorney General is obviously very busy, but not too busy to spend four months on a questionnaire. We find ourselves in a no win situation, since questionnaires are not answered when channelled through Public Relations Office and even when we try to call the AG herself on questions relating to her public work, we are not answered. It is not in our interest to be trying cases in public, but as an institution driven by public interest we believe your public office is obligated to respond to our inquires when we seek clarification on cases that you handle. Sitting on a questionnaire for four months in the era of delivery is indefensible.    All these make us long for Molokomme the gender activist. Whatever happened to her?