Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has fired shots at the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T in de­fence of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and a re­tired judge on var­i­ous re­cent is­sues–in­clud­ing al­leg­ing that the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent spoke "a lie" in one mat­ter. Is­su­ing the salvoes dur­ing yes­ter­day's de­bate of the 2010 bud­get in the Sen­ate, Je­re­mie–with­out call­ing names–said:

"I must note the re­marks made by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent at­tack­ing a re­tired judge of Ap­peal who stat­ed the or­tho­dox po­si­tion on the in­abil­i­ty of an in­fe­ri­or court to use an af­fi­davit which had been struck out in those pro­ceed­ings." "I am the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I am used to at­tack. But when the pres­i­dent of our Law As­so­ci­a­tion speaks a lie, I am oblig­ed to call him out," Je­re­mie de­clared, with­out nam­ing Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mar­tin Daly. Je­re­mie de­vot­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of his bud­get con­tri­bu­tion to re­ply­ing on is­sues which have cre­at­ed ten­sions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion all year.

Among them, the PM's ve­to of can­di­dates for the post of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the mat­ter of Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine's sub­mis­sion to the DPP and po­lice–for in­ves­ti­ga­tion–of an af­fi­davit by Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr. Bakr's af­fi­davit had al­leged that a deal had been made be­tween his group and the PNM. The doc­u­ment was struck out of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al court de­lib­er­a­tions on is­sues be­tween Gov­ern­ment and the Mus­limeen. Je­re­mie's first shot was is­sued on the mat­ter of the Prime Min­is­ter's ve­to right in the ap­point­ment of chief le­gal of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing the DPP, So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al and Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel. Je­re­mie said the PM, as head of the ex­ec­u­tive, was giv­en a role in the Con­sti­tu­tion, in de­ter­min­ing whether any per­sons should oc­cu­py these of­fices Stat­ing that this was a com­mon-sense pro­vi­sion em­pow­ered by the Con­sti­tu­tion, Je­re­mie added, "Be­fore mem­bers of the pub­lic seek to con­demn, as the pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has sought to so, the ex­er­cise of this pow­er, we should all be cog­nisant of the fact that there should be a pre­sump­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter will not act capri­cious­ly in mak­ing ap­point­ments to ex­ec­u­tive posts, in par­tic­u­lar to key ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions."

Je­re­mie re­vealed that he had en­coun­tered a chief le­gal of­fi­cer who had hid an opin­ion done by a Queen's Coun­sel re­tained by him. That opin­ion ad­vised on the lay­ing of a crim­i­nal charge in re­spect of promi­nent peo­ple in the so­ci­ety, Je­re­mie said. Je­re­mie said the of­fi­cer com­mis­sioned the opin­ion at state ex­pense, but hid it, choos­ing not to con­sult with the AG on the mat­ter "for rea­sons best known to him­self." "A copy of that opin­ion has re­cent­ly been passed to me by its au­thor and has been re­layed to me by the present hold­er of the post," Je­re­mie added. Je­re­mie said the sin­gle er­ror by that le­gal of­fi­cer "might well have cost the state a bil­lion dol­lars." He said quan­tifi­ca­tion of the dam­age was be­ing as­sessed and steps to be pur­sued were be­ing worked out by peo­ple hired at great state ex­pense. He said if the Prime Min­is­ter had con­cerns about a per­son who was to fill a post of chief le­gal of­fi­cer, the PM had a right to ex­er­cise a ve­to. "The sig­nif­i­cance of this dis­clo­sure is to demon­strate that the Prime Min­is­ter, as head of the ex­ec­u­tive, had a right and a cor­re­spond­ing du­ty un­der the con­sti­tu­tion­al and le­git­i­mate au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine who the chief le­gal of­fi­cers in the state's ex­ec­u­tive branch should be," Je­re­mie said.

"Hav­ing said that, I con­demn the ir­re­spon­si­ble and con­ve­nient state­ments by the pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion last week who made re­marks in op­po­si­tion to the ba­sic right of the Prime Min­is­ter as is es­tab­lished in the Con­sti­tu­tion. "The Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent was re­port­ed to have pre­dict­ed that had the ve­to been chal­lenged it would have been suc­cess­ful­ly so. "This is the leader of an as­so­ci­a­tion which speaks for 2,500 lawyers, fly­ing in the face of the ex­press terms set out in the Con­sti­tu­tion and be­fore the Privy Coun­cil has had a say in this mat­ter on two cas­es now pend­ing be­fore it." While agree­ing that the posts of chief le­gal of­fi­cers should be filled quick­ly, Je­re­mie said: "These are piv­otal posts. This coun­try faces a cri­sis again of con­sid­er­able pro­por­tions from white-col­lar crime per­haps more com­plex and greater than any we have faced in the past–now more than ever courage is need­ed in all ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions." Je­re­mie then pro­ceed­ed to com­ment on re­marks made by the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent against a re­tired Judge of Ap­peal who had com­ment­ed on the Mus­limeen af­fi­davit. Je­re­mie agreed with the re­tired judge