Consider the following: When a court, be it the Supreme Court or the High Courts, strikes down a law passed by parliament as being unconstitutional or invalid, is the decision assailed as a transgression into the realm of the legislature? Or do we say that the courts have exercised their constitutionally mandated (and inherent) powers of judicial review?

So, when parliamentarians invoke a procedure laid out in the Constitution and elaborated upon in statute – as they have on at least five occasions since independence – how should the government respond? Should they wait for the chairman to perform his role as laid down under Article 124 of the Constitution and the Judges Inquiry Act 1968, like all Governments have before them? Or should they engage in a campaign to malign and question the intentions of those invoking the process?