The law minister has made a number of comments suggesting that implementing the directive is not a high priority, and the five extensions that this government has requested together with the spurious clarifications it has sought on points already well-settled make it seem as though the government is playing games.

The government's repeated stall tactics suggest that it has no interest in implementing the directive. The impression we have received from our sources is that the government has taken no concrete steps towards such implementation and is in fact not at all convinced of the merit of such action.

Now is the time for the government to come clean. If it has reservations about the separation of the judiciary from the executive it should come out into the open and say so and initiate a national debate on the subject.

It is possible that the government's reservations are deserving of consideration, but there is no way that we can assess this or pursue any kind of meaningful debate on the subject unless the government comes out and openly states what its position is.

It is even possible that the separation of the judiciary from the executive can be accomplished while accommodating whatever reservations the government may have on the subject.

We reiterate our long-held position in support of the separation of the judiciary from the executive at the earliest possible date, and caution the government that its current strategy of stalling and saying that it is in favour of separating the judiciary from the executive while doing nothing to implement such separation is hurting its credibility, especially since the BNP pledged to separate the judiciary from the executive if voted into office.