Fran­cis Joseph

The bribe case brought against Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day and three oth­ers has been put on hold pend­ing the hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion of his ap­peal on a ju­di­cial re­view claim that the pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate was bi­ased.

Jus­tice Paula Mae Weekes, pre­sid­ing in the Court of Ap­peal, grant­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion for a stay of the crim­i­nal case pend­ing the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ju­di­cial re­view case. Pan­day was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Ravi Ra­j­coomar, while Dou­glas Mendes SC and Ian Ben­jamin ap­pear for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. State at­tor­ney Neil Byam ap­pears for the mag­is­trate. On Oc­to­ber 22, 2009, Jus­tice Vashiest Kokaram, pre­sid­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court, dis­missed Pan­day's ju­di­cial re­view case, paving the way for the crim­i­nal case to con­tin­ue. But Pan­day ap­pealed and when the crim­i­nal case was called be­fore Mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet last week, she want­ed to pro­ceed in the ab­sence of a stay of the pro­ceed­ings. Pan­day and his wife Oma are charged with ac­cept­ing a bribe of 25,000 pounds ster­ling from busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and for­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Car­los John. The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry be­gan be­fore Es­pinet on May 31, 2006. It was not un­til Feb­ru­ary 12, 2008 that Pan­day re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the mag­is­trate was a trustee and trea­sur­er of the Mor­ris Mar­shall De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion.

He ar­gued that the mag­is­trate nev­er dis­closed her in­volve­ment in the foun­da­tion to any of the par­ties be­fore her. Pan­day al­so con­tend­ed that Es­pinet's fa­ther, Alexan­der Cham­ber­lain, was a PNM Min­is­ter in the Dr Er­ic Williams Gov­ern­ment. But in his judg­ment, Kokaram asked the ques­tion: "Who is Alexan­der Cham­ber­lain Alex­is?" He said Alex­is fell off the po­lit­i­cal stage in 1976, and from the records of the par­ty, he is not a mem­ber of the PNM. He said there was a strik­ing pho­to­graph of Alex­is with Dr Williams, "but so too was ANR Robin­son, a po­lit­i­cal en­e­my of the PNM." Kokaram said Es­pinet has nev­er lived with her fa­ther and had no links with him. He said there was a miss­ing link in Pan­day's case to show that the Mor­ris Mar­shall Foun­da­tion was a po­lit­i­cal tool of the PNM. He point­ed out that the chair­man of the foun­da­tion was Fa­ther Clyde Har­vey, a per­son with no po­lit­i­cal links.

"Most of the claims ad­vanced by the claimant are ten­u­ous, the al­le­ga­tions that there were acts to grind, are mere phan­toms," Kokaram added. Ac­cord­ing to the judge, a well-in­formed ob­serv­er would want to know that judges act fair­ly in dis­pens­ing jus­tice. The crim­i­nal case will come up for hear­ing on Fri­day.