Attorney-General A. J. Nicholson's sense of exciting times for the justice system, about which he spoke as Chief Justice Zaila McCalla was being sworn in last week, is one that will take a long time to be shared by the wider Jamaican public. Their daily experiences tell them otherwise.

For while the Attorney-General acknowledged problems and shortcomings and pointed to efforts being made to address these, a public that has grown wary and weary of promises and extensive plans to change the system, with very little materialising, will be less optimistic than the minister.

The cry for justice has long been on the lips of the Jamaican people. This has been so since Emancipation from slavery when, for the first time, the majority of Jamaicans became legal persons who could demand justice. Most of the upheavals in our history - from the Morant Bay Rebellion through the labour riots of 1938 to the Gas Riot of 1999 - have been driven by the quest for justice.

So, with a long list of concerns to be addressed, Mrs. McCalla comes to the critically important constitutional role of Chief Justice of Jamaica to preside over the delivery of justice. She has our support and, we are sure, that of the majority of Jamaicans. Indeed, Jamaicans widely hold the independent judiciary in high esteem, despite the painful problems of the justice system.

Much has been made of the gender of the new Chief Justice as elements of the country celebrate 'woman time now'. We shall be far more interested in herperformance in the management of the judicial system, especially with regards to clearing up the enormous backlog of cases and in delivering justice speedily.

"Justice delayed is justice denied", as the large number of citizens (many languishing in jail, waiting for matters to be disposed of) will attest.

The immediate past Chief Justice, Mr. Lensley Wolfe, closed his tenure in the office, laying blame at the feet of the Government for failing to provide adequate budgetary support for the improvement and proper functioning of the judicial system.

Before being elevated to the head of the judiciary, Justice Wolfe had led a task force on crime in 1993, with several of its recommendations concerning the role of the justice system in crime reduction. The death penalty, which remains a legal response to conviction for murder, has been, for all practical purposes, abolished by the slowness of the appeal process.

The United Kingdom Privy Council, in the famous Pratt and Morgan case, has ruled, essentially, that long delays in settling appeals while murder convicts languish on death row constitute cruel and unusual punishment and should lead to a suspension of their death sentences.

At her swearing-in, Mrs. McCalla not only acknowledged the shortcomings of the justice system, which she intimately understands, but she promised to forego any extended celebration and to hit the ground running.

She will have a lot of running to do, but she comes to the office with a huge consensus of support from the political system and among her legal and judicial colleagues.

It is imperative that she gets all the support she and her colleague justices need to carry out their work effectively. For in the final analysis, their success accrues to the benefit of the wider society.