Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has been ac­cused of in­tim­i­dat­ing and ha­rass­ing not on­ly lawyers but judges and oth­er mem­bers of the ju­di­cial ser­vices af­ter crit­i­cis­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Mar­tin Daly, in the de­bate on the 2009/2010 na­tion­al bud­get in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's state­ment has sought to bring the en­tire ju­di­cial sys­tem in­to fur­ther dis­or­der and ridicule in the eyes of an al­ready scep­ti­cal and anx­ious pub­lic," said Wade Mark, leader of Op­po­si­tion Busi­ness in the Sen­ate. "The At­tor­ney Gen­era's con­duct can­not be light­ly dis­missed but ap­pears to be a sys­tem­at­ic pat­tern of be­hav­iour aimed at in­tim­i­dat­ing, bul­ly­ing and ha­rass­ing the lawyers, judges and the en­tire ju­di­cia­ry."

Mark was re­spond­ing to state­ments from Je­re­mie, who said that it was an oblig­a­tion to call out the Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion af­ter he "speaks a lie." Je­re­mie al­so de­scribed state­ments from the Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion as "ir­re­spon­si­ble and con­ve­nient." He added that the law was not his faith but that it was his pro­fes­sion. Ac­cord­ing to Mark, the con­tri­bu­tion from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ap­peared to be what he re­ferred to as "out­ra­geous and un­war­rant­ed at­tack on the Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion" and that it was done us­ing the cloak of Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

"It is tru­ly a sad day when an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al who has al­ready de­vel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for in­ter­fer­ing and seek­ing to di­rect the work­ing of the of­fice of a for­mer Di­rec­tor of Pu­bic Pros­e­cu­tions, Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son, could so shame­less­ly con­demn the 2,500 lawyers in Trinidad and To­ba­go who are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by its Pres­i­dent, who was de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed," Mark said. "The UNC strong­ly con­demns the reck­less stance be­ing adopt­ed by this At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in a mat­ter in which the gov­ern­ment seems to have de­clared war on not on­ly the lawyers of this coun­try but al­so the judges when he shame­less­ly and shock­ing­ly launched an un­war­rant­ed at­tack on Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine." He added that the ac­tions of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al could not be what he not­ed as �healthy for the ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the sys­tem of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice."