Fran­cis Joseph

It was a dou­ble blow for Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in the Court of Ap­peal yes­ter­day as he lost two ju­di­cial re­view cas­es in which he had ve­toed the ap­point­ments of two se­nior pub­lic ser­vants to high-rank­ing po­si­tions in the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

Man­ning was al­so un­der pres­sure in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day as he tried to con­vince sen­a­tors to sup­port the bill for post­pon­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions for an­oth­er 12 months. In one court case, Fer­oza Ramjohn was deemed a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty risk and her trans­fer to the Trinidad and To­ba­go High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don was re­scind­ed. In the oth­er case, Gan­ga Per­sad Kissoon was the num­ber one choice to be­come Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, but he was by­passed for pro­mo­tion.

For­mer Jus­tice David My­ers dis­missed Kissoon's ju­di­cial re­view case, but yes­ter­day, the Court of Ap­peal, com­pris­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, Jus­tice Mar­got Warn­er and Jus­tice Al­lan Men­don­ca, ruled for the pub­lic ser­vant against the PM and the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC). In both cas­es, Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, SC, and Anand Ram­lo­gan ap­peared for the pub­lic ser­vants, while Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, rep­re­sent­ed the State.

In Ramjohn's case, Jus­tice Am­ri­ka Ti­wary-Red­dy ruled for the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs ac­coun­tant, but the State ap­pealed. Yes­ter­day, the court of ap­peal, by a 2-1 ma­jor­i­ty, dis­missed the State's ap­peal but or­dered that no dam­ages be award­ed to Ramjohn. Warn­er and Men­don­ca ruled for Ramjohn, while Jus­tice Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo dis­sent­ed. The court grant­ed a de­c­la­ra­tion to Ramjohn that she was treat­ed un­fair­ly, by the fail­ure of the Prime Min­is­ter to in­form her of the case against her, and to give her an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

Ramjohn, 58, has been a pub­lic ser­vant for the past 38 years. Dur­ing her ca­reer, she served two over­seas mis­sions–as of­fi­cer in charge of the reg­istry in the Con­sulate in New York, and as ac­counts of­fi­cer in the per­ma­nent mis­sion to the Unit­ed Na­tions, al­so in New York. On May 11, 1999, two diplo­mat­ic pouch­es which were despatched from Port-of-Spain to New York went miss­ing on BW 424. It was lat­er dis­cov­ered that one of the pouch­es was found in a con­tain­er with fish. The sec­ond pouch con­tained 200 blank T&T pass­ports.

On June 5, 2001, one of two pouch­es with T&T pass­ports went miss­ing. An in­tel­li­gence re­port, bear­ing dates June 23 and 25, 2001, stat­ed that an of­fi­cial of the per­ma­nent mis­sion in New York gave in­for­ma­tion "which tends to show that Ms Fer­oza Ramjohn, of the Reg­istry, For­eign Af­fairs of­fice in Trinidad, may be in­volved in a ma­jor con­spir­a­cy to steal a diplo­mat­ic pouch con­tain­ing 200 blank T&T pass­ports."

Ramjohn de­nied that she was part of any con­spir­a­cy to steal blank T&T pass­ports. She said she had left NY con­sul­tate ten years be­fore and had no al­lies there. No charge or dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was tak­en against any­one. Af­ter ac­coun­tant Bis­soon Bood­hai was charged with oth­ers for con­spir­a­cy to traf­fic co­caine in diplo­mat­ic pouch­es, Ramjohn was in­formed that she was go­ing to the Lon­don mis­sion as ac­coun­tant. She re­ceived a let­ter and in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment about her trans­fer, which was signed by the Prime Min­is­ter.

But a month lat­er, Ramjohn was hand­ed a let­ter re­scind­ing her trans­fer to Lon­don. She was con­sid­ered a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty risk, and her ap­point­ment was ve­toed by the PM. She was not giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard, or to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions. She was not sent to Lon­don, and some­one else, her ju­nior, was al­lowed to go to the T&T High Com­mis­sion. Warn­er, in her eight-page judg­ment, said Ramjohn had no right to be trans­ferred to the High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don. But Warn­er found that Ramjohn was treat­ed un­fair­ly by the fail­ure of the PM to