Yvonne Webb

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last night called on Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Joan Hon­ore-Paul to step aside in the Email­gate mat­ter over a state­ment she made on the is­sue last week.

Her com­ments came hours af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment and con­cern over Hon­ore-Paul's judg­ment last week in crit­i­cis­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar for sug­gest­ing that she and her col­leagues had been cleared in the probe when the case was still open.

Dur­ing a cot­tage meet­ing in Tu­na­puna yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had asked her lawyers to pe­ruse the deputy DPP's state­ment and they would now call on her to re­cuse her­self from the mat­ter since she had demon­strat­ed a clear bias.

She said her lawyers had al­so ad­vised her that Hon­ore-Paul had tres­passed on the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit of the Po­lice Ser­vice and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Ear­li­er, in a strong­ly word­ed re­sponse, Nicholas ap­pealed to Hon­ore-Paul to main­tain the in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of the DPP, say­ing the PM was well with­in her right to de­fend her name in the mat­ter.

He said he was trou­bled by the tenor of Hon­ore-Paul's com­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly her state­ment that "no man should be a judge in his own cause," as this could leave a rea­son­able read­er with the per­cep­tion that there was in­deed a case to be an­swered be­fore the courts.

"This is of par­tic­u­lar con­cern giv­en, as you have said, that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are not yet com­plete. You would no doubt agree that this would im­pact up­on pub­lic per­cep­tion of the in­de­pen­dence and com­pe­tence of the of­fice of the DPP," Nicholas wrote.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern that Hon­ore-Paul's re­sponse was made avail­able to the me­dia pri­or to her com­mu­ni­cat­ing any of her con­cerns to him.

Point­ing out that while she tele­phoned him at 6.55 pm on May 13 in­form­ing him a copy of her let­ter would be faxed to his of­fice, which she sub­se­quent­ly did (but which he saw on­ly the next day), so­cial me­dia sites were re­port­ing its con­tents from 6 pm that said day.

Nicholas told Hon­ore-Paul that since he had as­sumed of­fice he had main­tained a very cor­dial and pro­fes­sion­al work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the DPP's of­fice as line min­is­ter.

He said he had a num­ber of meet­ings with DPP Roger Gas­pard to dis­cuss a range of is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly those re­lat­ed to in­creas­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of the of­fice and the wel­fare of the staff.

Gas­pard had ear­li­er re­cused him­self from pre­sid­ing over the mat­ter be­cause he was named in the emails.

Nicholas said yes­ter­day at no time dur­ing those meet­ings was he ap­proached ei­ther by the DPP or Hon­ore-Paul to dis­cuss the is­sue ref­er­enced.

"As such, you would no doubt un­der­stand my dis­ap­point­ment and con­cern for your judg­ment, as a se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cer, in tak­ing your con­cerns to the me­dia be­fore first ad­dress­ing these con­cerns di­rect­ly with me," he said.

Hon­ore-Paul's let­ter, is­sued last Wednes­day, slammed the PM's haste to clear her­self and for­mer AG Anand Ram­lo­gan in the Email­gate mat­ter first raised in the Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley in 2013 and which has be­come sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the lo­cal po­lice and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Hon­ore-Paul had not­ed the use of in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to the lo­cal po­lice by the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Jus­tice in de­fence of the al­le­ga­tions, say­ing it was un­for­tu­nate this in­for­ma­tion was be­ing made pub­lic.

She cau­tioned that par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the pub­lic air­ing of the sup­posed re­sults were pal­pa­bly self serv­ing and sug­gest­ed no man should be a judge in his own cause.

But Nicholas re­mind­ed her that no crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions had been in­sti­tut­ed against any of the in­di­vid­u­als con­cerned in the email dis­clo­sures.

"These mat­ters are still with­in the in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry realm of the Po­lice Ser­vice. The rep­u­ta­tion of those per­sons have been called in­to ques­tion and it is en­tire­ly open to them to seek pub­licly swift vin­di­ca­tion. You are re­mind­ed that this in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter for this very rea­son."

He sug­gest­ed that no or­gan of the State, in­clud­ing the DPP's of­fice, ought to dis­cour­age or in any way threat­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion with­out law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

"I con­sid­er it my du­ty to re­spect­ful­ly re­mind you to op­er­ate with­in your con­sti­tu­tion­al purview to en­sure that the fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms of ac­cused per­sons are not threat­ened by your state­ments or ac­tion," he stat­ed.

Fun­da­men­tal rights

In his de­fence of the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's use of the con­tents of con­fi­den­tial po­lice re­ports from the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice to lo­cal po­lice, which Hon­ore-Paul said should not have been made pub­lic, the AG said her con­cerns were not­ed.

"Let me make it clear that your con­cerns with re­gard to the cor­re­spon­dence from the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice find­ing its way in­to the pub­lic do­main are not­ed, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty re­tains no copies of doc­u­ments fur­nished by for­eign law en­force­ment agen­cies and sim­ply for­wards same to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, in this case, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Of­fice of the DPP."

He called on her to main­tain the in­de­pen­dence of the DPP's of­fice and pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of the crim­i­nal jus­tic process in re­la­tion to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions by ex­er­cis­ing care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion be­fore mak­ing any oth­er pub­lic state­ment which may have the ten­den­cy to prej­u­dice peo­ple ac­cused of crim­i­nal con­duct.

"He al­so asked her to bear in mind that those peo­ple en­joy the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence and the safe­guards to pro­tect their fun­da­men­tal rights as guar­an­teed by the Con­sti­tu­tion.