fair-minded observer the concerns of the complainant are justified. The complainants’ fears or concerns can have no significant bearing on that determination. Perhaps the significance that may be attached to the concerns of the Appellants are best expressed in the speech of Lord Hope in Porter v Magill, supra, where he said (at para. 104): “The complainer’s fears are clearly relevant at the initial stage when the court has to decide whether the complaint is one that should be investigated. But they lose their importance once the stage is reached of looking at the matter objectively.” The stand-point of the Appellants may therefore be considered important when the Court has to decide whether the complaint should be investigated. However in determining whether the complaint has been objectively justified it loses its importance. 41. The other qualification relates to the level of suspicion of the fair-minded and informed observer. Counsel for the Appellants submitted that prevailing conditions in the country take precedence in determining the test. The test will therefore apply differently if local considerations are different. In other words, in this jurisdiction, it is appropriate to regard the observer as suspicious so that he is to be treated as being suspicious and not as not unduly suspicious. 42. I however do not agree. Among the characteristics attributed to the fair-minded observer, as I have already mentioned, is that he is not unduly sensitive or suspicious. To accept the submission that he should be treated otherwise would go against well-established authority. In Panday v Virgil, a decision which is binding on this Court, Archie, JA. (as he then was) saw the attribute that the observer is not unduly suspicious as a “critical caveat in a society such as ours that is deeply polarized and where conspiracy theories abound”. I too think it is a critical caveat, not because it serves to give the observer immunity against a symptom that is rampant in this jurisdiction, but because it is a natural corollary of the other characteristics of the observer. 43. I do not think that we as a people have any greater tendency to be more suspicious than anyone else. If we tend to be so on occasion it often goes hand in hand with the lack of knowledge of relevant information. The fair-minded observer is however informed. As I have mentioned, he can distinguished what is relevant and what is not. He will take the time to inform himself of all matters that are relevant and be able to determine the weight to be given to those 13

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