Fran­cis Joseph

Dou­glas Mendes, SC, is up­set with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and its pres­i­dent, Mar­tin Daly, SC, for pub­lish­ing a "pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial" let­ter which he sent to the as­so­ci­a­tion con­cern­ing the con­tro­ver­sial af­fi­davit of Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader, Yasin Abu Bakr. In a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 15, Mendes said: "I can on­ly con­clude that you and your coun­cil set about pub­lish­ing my views with­out my per­mis­sion, reck­less, if not in­tend­ing, that I would be em­bar­rassed, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly." Mendes' let­ter was in re­sponse to one sent the day be­fore by Daly to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, in which Daly quot­ed from a doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by Mendes.

The whole is­sue stemmed from Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine send­ing Bakr's af­fi­davit to the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the act­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for in­ves­ti­ga­tions. There have been op­pos­ing views from the AG and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion. But Mendes, who rep­re­sents the AG in civ­il ac­tions, was very up­set at the lat­est re­sponse from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion. He said he im­me­di­ate­ly called Daly up­on hear­ing that his views had been made pub­lic. He said he reg­is­tered his "deep dis­ap­point­ment" that such pub­li­ca­tion could have oc­curred with­out his per­mis­sion, and in breach of con­fi­dence. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that the as­so­ci­a­tion was his trade union, Mendes said he ex­pect­ed that the views of mem­bers, con­cern­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, would en­joy full con­fi­dence. He said af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion stat­ed that Nar­ine had ju­ris­dic­tion to send the af­fi­davit for in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he wrote to Daly, un­so­licit­ed, by let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 25, ex­press­ing the view that Nar­ine was wrong in what he did.

He said he could have ren­dered his opin­ion in any num­ber of pub­lic ways. "How­ev­er, giv­en my in­volve­ment in the Bakr case, it would have been awk­ward, to say the least, for me to have done so," Mendes said. "In ad­di­tion, I did not wish to take a pub­lic po­si­tion to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion which could lead to the un­der­min­ing of its ef­fec­tive­ness in de­fence of the ju­di­cia­ry." Mendes said he did not wish to po­si­tion him­self be­tween the AG and the as­so­ci­a­tion. But he said he was care­ful to make plain that his let­ter was be­ing sent un­der "pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial" cov­er. "It was there­fore clear­ly wrong of you to make any of it pub­lic with­out my ex­press per­mis­sion and I am frankly stunned that you have done so," he added. In his let­ter, which was cir­cu­lat­ed to all mem­bers of the coun­cil, Mendes said Daly so­licit­ed his view on con­duct, not law. He said there was no re­quest for a for­mal le­gal opin­ion and there was no in­di­ca­tion that the e-mail he sent would have been dis­cussed by the en­tire coun­cil, far less be­ing made pub­lic.

"I would no more ex­pect you to pub­lish my e-mail, than I would ex­pect you to pub­lish my views ex­pressed in the course of a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion or over drinks at a cock­tail par­ty," he added. Mendes said he was con­cerned at the abuse of his right to ex­press such views in con­fi­dence. "What is even more re­gret­table is that for the sake of com­plete­ness, I have been forced in this let­ter to make pub­lic oth­er parts of my ad­vice about Jus­tice Nar­ine's ac­tions which I de­lib­er­ate­ly sought to avoid by com­mu­ni­cat­ing with you un­der con­fi­den­tial cov­er," he said. "My views have been ex­posed for pub­lic scruti­ny when it was my clear pref­er­ence that they be kept be­tween us." Mendes said he was now forced in­to a po­si­tion where he would be ex­treme­ly guard­ed in the fu­ture about what he says, even in a let­ter head­ed "pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial."

DALY RE­SPONDS

When con­tact­ed last night, Daly said: "There is an­oth­er side to the sto­ry. The e-mail I quot­ed from was not marked 'pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial.' This fol­lowed a re­quest from me to him for ad­vice and ur­gent as­sis­tance. I com­mit­ted no breach of con­fi­dence. A full re­sponse will come in due course."