AG’S ‘HEALTH CHALLENGES’

His pointed dismissal of UNC Chairman Senator Wade Mark’s proffered hand, when Mark sought to welcome him back to the Senate, and his comment that Mark’s inference last week that he was near death had "caused no end of anguish for my family" has deepened the mystery surrounding his health. Why should the Attorney General’s family which must know whether he was ill or not have been anguished by Mark’s statement however ill advised or gauche Mark’s words might have been?

We are grateful to Mr. Jeremie for his "assurance to Newsday" that he was not on his death bed. In all our reports on this matter, we never once made such a statement. What we reported, based on very reliable sources, was that Mr. Jeremie was seriously ill.

Of course we took great (not personal) interest in the reports because of the person involved. After all he is the Attorney General and it was his Government that issued a press release which stated and we quote: "that he had taken a leave of absence for reasons of illness." The health of the Attorney General is a matter of public concern and we would have thought that this was obvious to everyone.

Indeed, what gave rise to even greater curiousity was the less than honest response to our questions, and the attitude of persons in the know that the Attorney General’s health was nobody’s business but his own.

Take Minister Lenny Saith for example. Does he not think that the holder of the office of Attorney General by virtue of the office he holds is a public figure and not a private person? The Attorney General is paid by taxpayers and the taxpayers should not only know if he is ill but the nature of the illness. Why was such a smoke screen created around what after all is a public matter, and indeed would have been a simple matter had there not been such an attempt to keep us all in the dark.

Nothing would please us more than to be told by Mr. Jeremie himself that he was in the best of health but his statement in the Senate on Tuesday, (like all the other statements made in the last week), has not answered the question, and indeed has increased the mystery. Why all this beating around the bush?