Fran­cis Joseph

It is billed as the biggest show­down among the lawyers in the le­gal pro­fes­sion. To­day's spe­cial meet­ing of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to deal with the re­turn of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie would see one of the biggest gath­er­ing of lawyers , even larg­er than the meet­ing called in 2006, in the wake of the at­tempt by the po­lice to ar­rest then Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma on a charge of at­tempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice.

All day yes­ter­day, there was talk in the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, among lawyers about to­day's meet­ing, start­ing at 3 pm in the Con­vo­ca­tion Hall, which would be chaired by as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Mar­tin Daly, SC. The as­so­ci­a­tion needs a quo­rum of 50 to get the meet­ing off the ground. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, on­ly fi­nan­cial mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion will be al­lowed to vote at the end of the meet­ing.

More than 1,500 at­tor­neys are list­ed on the rolls, but a num­ber of them re­mained non-fi­nan­cial. Nor­mal­ly, at­tor­neys in pri­vate prac­tice make up a meet­ing of the as­so­ci­a­tion. But to­day, lawyers from al­most every de­part­ment with­in the State would be turn­ing out for the meet­ing.

The of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) is ex­pect­ed to be well-rep­re­sent­ed, fol­low­ing the dis­pute be­tween their for­mer DPP Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son and Je­re­mie in 2006 over the fil­ing of crim­i­nal charges against peo­ple who were op­posed to the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment. The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that the pro­fes­sion is very di­vid­ed on this is­sue. A large turnout of lawyers from south Trinidad is al­so ex­pect­ed.

But the AG will al­so have his sup­port, in­clud­ing Is­rael Khan, SC, who has open­ly sup­port­ed the re­turn of the for­mer T&T High Com­mis­sion­er to the Unit­ed King­dom. Khan, who will at­tend to­day's meet­ing, wel­comed Je­re­mie's re­turn on May 29, say­ing he could be de­scribed as the best AG this coun­try had seen. The meet­ing will con­sid­er and dis­cuss the re­port­ed dis­pute be­tween Je­re­mie and Hen­der­son in 2006. Hen­der­son is now a High Court judge.

The as­so­ci­a­tion will dis­cuss a let­ter dat­ed De­cem­ber 11, 2006, writ­ten by Hen­der­son to Je­re­mie, which stat­ed in part, "I am not sub­ject to your di­rec­tions. Your con­tin­ued ef­forts to have me ini­ti­ate charges against cer­tain per­sons are high­ly im­prop­er and should they con­tin­ue can im­per­il the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of any charge ini­ti­at­ed in the mat­ters un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion."

The as­so­ci­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to its mo­tion, took note of news­pa­per re­ports which dis­closed at­tempts by Je­re­mie "to im­prop­er­ly and il­le­gal­ly in­ter­fere with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es, and by so do­ing to un­der­mine and threat­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions."

The mo­tion seeks to con­demn in the strongest man­ner, the re­port­ed at­tempts by Je­re­mie to im­prop­er­ly and il­le­gal­ly in­ter­fere with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es. The mo­tion al­so seeks to con­demn in the strongest man­ner, the re­port­ed at­tempts by the AG to un­der­mine and threat­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of DPP.

The mo­tion fur­ther seeks to de­clare that it has no con­fi­dence in Je­re­mie as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and tit­u­lar head of the Bar of T&T. The Guardian was al­so in­formed that lawyers would call for the Gov­ern­ment to ap­point a DPP, So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al, Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel and Chief State So­lic­i­tor.