Fran­cis Joseph

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion has passed a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie con­cern­ing his bat­tle with for­mer Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son. In a well-at­tend­ed spe­cial meet­ing of the as­so­ci­a­tion at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, lawyers vot­ed 106-82 in favour of the mo­tion that they have ab­solute­ly no con­fi­dence in Je­re­mie, who was ap­point­ed AG on May 29 for a sec­ond time. The re­sults were an­nounced by Mar­tin Daly, SC, pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion at 7.20 pm on the steps of the Hall of Jus­tice. The lawyers, by a vote of 121-67, con­demned in the strongest man­ner, the re­port­ed at­tempts by Je­re­mie to im­prop­er­ly and il­le­gal­ly in­tef­ere with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

The lawyers, by a vote of 127-59, con­demned in the strongest man­ner, the re­port­ed at­tempts by Je­re­mie to un­der­mine and threat­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence in the of­fice of DPP. Daly told the me­dia: "Now that the mem­bers have ex­pressed them­selves, this is now the view of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion. We have noth­ing to say be­yond what our mem­bers have said in this mo­tion. "I don't think that the Law As­so­ci­a­tion is go­ing to say any­thing, oth­er than what was done to­day. I would be sur­prised if the Coun­cil would say any­thing more on this mat­ter at this stage." Daly said 16 mem­bers of the pro­fes­sion spoke, among them se­nior mem­bers of the Bar. He said lawyers spoke for and against the mo­tion. He did ad­mit that some mem­bers raised con­tentious mat­ters, which were sub­se­quent­ly with­drawn. He asked those mem­bers not to re­peat them out­side the meet­ing, but at least three se­nior lawyers spoke with re­porters out­side the cour­t­house.

"We had a very or­der­ly meet­ing, as pres­i­dent, I am very proud that the as­so­ci­a­tion con­duct­ed the meet­ing with­out any bac­cha­nal," Daly said. Dana See­ta­hal, SC, did not think there was enough ev­i­dence be­fore the as­so­ci­a­tion to jus­ti­fy the mo­tion, in par­tic­u­lar the one which made men­tion of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. She said: "You can't have a mo­tion which talks about re­port­ed at­tempts, you can't con­demn re­port­ed at­tempts, you ei­ther con­demn at­tempts, or noth­ing. That mo­tion did not fit well, but I un­der­stand the in­ten­tion of the mo­tion." See­ta­hal felt Je­re­mie was car­ry­ing on the tra­di­tion of his pre­de­ces­sors in terms of how he chose to be­have. She did not think a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion was nec­es­sary.

See­ta­hal point­ed out that her briefs came from the DPP and not the AG. Is­rael Khan, SC, a de­fend­er of the AG, said the lawyers made a moun­tain out of a mole­hill. "It was a storm in a tea cup," he added. When asked what was next, a dis­ap­point­ed Khan said: "We would go to court, go to cock­tail par­ties, and go to Bar din­ners, that's about it. I am not dis­ap­point­ed in the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, I am dis­ap­point­ed in the young lawyers. It is the se­nior lawyers who spoke on be­half of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. It was a very good de­bate, a lev­el-head­ed de­bate, but the votes in­di­cat­ed some­thing else."

Khan said the coun­try should be hap­py with Je­re­mie. "The per­sons who should be fear­ful of this at­tor­ney gen­er­al are those in­volved in crimes and cor­rup­tion, es­pe­cial­ly white-col­lar crimes. The res­o­lu­tion is based on hearsay ev­i­dence which ap­peared in a news­pa­per," he said.

Khan said the AG nev­er di­rect­ed the DPP whom to charge. "He said the Gov­ern­ment had ex­pend­ed a lot of mon­ey and why you are not charg­ing these peo­ple? What are you do­ing? The DPP said he was go­ing to charge when he is ready to charge, and that was the end of that. We have a strong DPP and a strong AG." Desmond Al­lum, SC, said he does not feel any­thing fur­ther would hap­pen. He said if the as­so­ci­a­tion was deal­ing with a more sen­si­tive AG, per­haps he would re­sign. "That was too much to ex­pect from this at­tor­ney gen­er­al," he said.