Ak­ile Si­mon

There is ex­pect­ed to be a height­ened se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence in and around the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court to­day, as Prime Min­is­ter Patrick

Man­ning is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court to an­swer a pri­vate com­plaint brought against him. Man­ning is the first sit­ting prime min­is­ter in the his­to­ry of the coun­try to face a pri­vate crim­i­nal charge brought against him by a mem­ber of the pub­lic. A woman iden­ti­fied in the

sum­mons as Natasha Cum­ber­batch is the com­plainant. She has al­leged that on May 21, in Port-of-Spain, Man­ning used an­noy­ing lan­guage

to her. Ac­cord­ing to the charge, Man­ning used "an­noy­ing lan­guage

with in­tent to pro­voke the com­plainant (Cum­ber­batch) to com­mit a breach of peace, con­trary to sec­tion 49 Chap­ter 11:02 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act."

On June 25, Cum­ber­batch laid the com­plaint be­fore a Jus­tice of

the Peace at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court. A sum­mons was lat­er is­sued and served, which or­dered Man­ning to ap­pear be­fore a

mag­is­trate to­day. The sum­mons al­so list­ed Man­ning's ad­dress as the

Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. Checks at the court re­vealed

Man­ning's case is list­ed to be heard to­day be­fore Sec­ond

Court Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles. Ju­di­cial sources said be­cause

of Man­nings' sta­tus, the case would be trans­ferred be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­colls or Se­nior Mag­is­trate Lu­ci­na Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan. The of­fence car­ries a fine of $200 or 30 days' im­pris­on­ment. Ac­cord­ing to a ju­di­cial source yes­ter­day, the Sum­ma­ry Courts Act states that once a per­son has been served, they could ei­ther rep­re­sent them­selves in a pri­vate com­plaint or the in­di­vid­ual

could be rep­re­sent­ed by their at­tor­ney.

"Once he is served, he may at­tend and the charge would be read to him and he would be asked to en­ter a plea. "Once the per­son is served the mat­ter could pro­ceed in their ab­sence through their at­tor­ney as long as the de­fen­dant gives his at­tor­ney in­struc­tions to pro­ceed. "The at­tor­ney will do all the cross-ex­am­i­na­tion and make

le­gal sub­mis­sions," the ju­di­cial of­fi­cer said. Ac­cord­ing to the source, a mag­is­trate could use his or her dis­cre­tion if a de­fen­dant was served and he is ab­sent and he had no le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in

court. "The pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate could is­sue a war­rant, a fur­ther

sum­mons or pro­ceed with the mat­ter in the ab­sence of the de­fen­dant," the source said yes­ter­day.

The source added it would be in the Prime Min­is­ter's best po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est if he at­tend­ed court when the mat­ter is called,

which would show the pub­lic he too, could be treat­ed equal­ly in

the eyes of the law.