Even though it has tak­en quite an in­or­di­nate length of time since first go­ing to court, the fi­nal judg­ment of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil in mat­ters in­volv­ing two lo­cal pub­lic ser­vants ap­peal­ing against what they con­sid­ered ar­bi­trary de­ci­sion-mak­ing by then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is very in­struc­tive for min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter.

The Privy Coun­cil joined its de­ci­sions in the mat­ters in­volv­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of the ap­point­ments of pub­lic ser­vants Fer­oza Ramjohn and Gan­ga Per­sad Kissoon to high­er po­si­tions in the ser­vice in 2004 and 2001 re­spec­tive­ly.In the in­stance of Ms Ramjohn, she was rec­om­mend­ed for a job by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to the staff of the T&T High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don and ac­cept­ed for the job by Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning. How­ev­er, with­in a week, Mr Man­ning re­voked the ap­point­ment be­cause a "con­fi­den­tial re­port" from BWIA claimed that Ms Ramjohn was in­volved in a "pass­port rack­et."

Mr Kissoon placed first in a PSC in­ter­view for the po­si­tion of Di­rec­tor of State Lands. How­ev­er, with the change of gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter, the job was re­designed and PM Man­ning, act­ing on the ad­vice of his Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, re­voked the ap­point­ment. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly the sec­ond-placed can­di­date from the in­ter­views was ac­cept­ed for the po­si­tion now re­ferred to as Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands.In its judg­ment on Mon­day, the Privy Coun­cil made the point that while the Prime Min­is­ter does have the pow­er un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion to ve­to se­lec­tions made by the ser­vice com­mis­sion to cer­tain po­si­tions in the ser­vice, un­der the Ju­di­cial Re­view Act of 2000 he must "do so in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice or in a fair man­ner."

So too does the Privy Coun­cil note that the Act re­quires that "where a per­son is ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by a de­ci­sion to which this Act ap­plies, he may re­quest from the de­ci­sion-mak­er a state­ment of the rea­sons for the de­ci­sion."In the in­stance of Ms Ramjohn, she was not in­formed of the al­le­ga­tion made against her and not giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to it. For Mr Kissoon, the Privy Coun­cil ruled that he still does not know why he was re­ject­ed by the PM.

"In the cir­cum­stances of this case, the re­spon­dent was treat­ed un­fair­ly by the Prime Min­is­ter's fail­ure to ex­er­cise his pow­er of ve­to ra­tio­nal­ly or at least to pro­vide a ra­tio­nal ex­pla­na­tion for ex­er­cis­ing it against the re­spon­dent's ap­point­ment." Too of­ten un­der the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem we op­er­ate, in which the Prime Min­is­ter is giv­en quite a lot of pow­er to act, it is said and be­lieved that the Prime Min­is­ter can act as he/she pleas­es with­out ref­er­ence to the im­por­tant prin­ci­ples out­lined in the judg­ment of the Privy Coun­cil.

What the fi­nal court of ap­peal of the land is say­ing is that min­is­ters and prime min­is­ters have quite an amount of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-de­rived pow­er, but that can­not over­ride in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice, in­clud­ing the right to know and to be able to re­spond. Now just in case any read­er is won­der­ing, both the lo­cal High and Ap­peal Courts found that the PM had act­ed un­fair­ly and it was Mr Man­ning, as was his right, who took the mat­ter to the Privy Coun­cil. Sure­ly the judg­ments of the lo­cal courts are in­dica­tive of their in­de­pen­dence, strength and ju­di­cial sagac­i­ty.

No doubt the judg­ment will now form part of the law on such mat­ters and Prime Min­is­ters and oth­ers will be suit­ably fore­warned. How­ev­er, the Privy Coun­cil found it im­por­tant to stress that not every pub­lic ser­vant feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed by min­is­te­r­i­al act should ex­pect de­ci­sions to be eas­i­ly over­turned.In fair­ness to Mr Man­ning, though, the Privy Coun­cil stat­ed clear­ly that "there is no ques­tion here of the Prime Min­is­ter hav­ing act­ed oth­er­wise than in good faith in each case."