Four more months

This would be the 22nd time that the government is going to request an extension in order to fulfill the directive of the court, and while we would like to say that we are surprised and shocked by such contemptuous disregard for the court's orders, the truth is that we are neither.

The law minister in justification of the additional delay makes the irrelevant and spurious point that the last AL government also did not manage to separate the judiciary from the executive in the one and a half years it had in office after the Supreme Court had issued its directive. Please. One, the last government's failures in no way excuse the failures of this regime. More to the point, the current government has had four and a half years -- three times as long -- in order to effectuate the order.

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The issue now, the law minister earnestly assures us, is that of the logistical difficulties of replacing some 640 administrative carders with judicial magistrates. There is no doubt that this is indeed a significant logistic issue, but does the minister really mean to suggest that his ministry is so incompetent that four and a half years is not enough time to do so.

But let us get to the heart of the matter. It is patently clear, and it has been for some time, that the government has been insincere on this issue from the very beginning. Despite its pre-election pledge, it never intended to separate the judiciary from the executive. The nation is bluffed and now it is attempting to bluff the court.

The government's prevarications have made its intentions perfectly clear to those who have been watching this distasteful spectacle. Looking at the evidence of the last four years, who could be blamed for reaching the conclusion that the government has all along had zero intention of separating the judiciary from the executive as doing so would end its control over the judicial machinery.