For­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor Wayne Sturge has with­drawn his ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion to tem­porar­i­ly block the sale of Petrotrin’s Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. 

When Sturge’s ap­pli­ca­tion for in­junc­tion block­ing the sale and com­pelling Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to call a meet­ing of Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on En­er­gy Af­fairs came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Im­bert’s lawyer Mar­tin Daly, SC, in­formed the court that the meet­ing was set for next Wednes­day. 

Re­spond­ing to Daly, Sturge’s lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen ad­mit­ted that the de­ci­sion ren­dered the in­junc­tion un­nec­es­sary as the meet­ing was set as re­quest­ed and the stop­ping of the re­fin­ery sale was based on the fact that Im­bert had not called a meet­ing of the JSC for al­most 20 months. 

How­ev­er, Ramdeen stat­ed that his client still want­ed to pur­sue the re­main­ing as­pects of the case over whether Im­bert, as chair­man of the com­mit­tee, act­ed un­law­ful­ly and un­rea­son­ably in fail­ing to call the meet­ing for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od. 

Daly then sug­gest­ed that Boodoos­ingh con­sid­er a pre­lim­i­nary le­gal is­sue over whether the court had the ju­ris­dic­tion to re­view the work of Par­lia­ment in the case. 

“The claimant case is premised on is­sues that can be demon­strat­ed, as a mat­ter of law, to be wrong,” Daly said, as he claimed that deal­ing with the pre­lim­i­nary is­sue first would help to save ju­di­cial time and the le­gal costs to be in­curred by the par­ties. 

Se­nior Coun­sel Deb­o­rah Peake, who is lead­ing the le­gal team for Par­lia­ment, sup­port­ed Daly’s pre­lim­i­nary ob­jec­tion. 

Peake al­so not­ed that her client was ex­pect­ing a judge­ment over the court’s ju­ris­dic­tion to re­view Par­lia­men­tary work on No­vem­ber 1, which may help de­ter­mine Sturge’s case. 

In that case, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is chal­leng­ing that com­po­si­tion of the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment, which in­ves­ti­gat­ed con­tempt al­le­ga­tions against him. 

Peake al­so claimed that her client was will­ing to pro­duce ev­i­dence in the sub­stan­tive case, which will show that there were oth­er av­enues to get ac­count­abil­i­ty in Par­lia­ment, which were not pur­sued be­fore the law­suit was filed. 

In his sub­mis­sions, Fyard Ho­sein, SC, who is rep­re­sent­ing the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, had ob­jec­tions to Sturge’s law­suit but claimed that it should be dealt with dur­ing the tri­al of the sub­stan­tive case. 

“There is no more ur­gency. Pre­lim­i­nary points are long and cum­ber­some,” Ho­sein said. 

Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who rep­re­sent­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies, the com­pa­ny owned by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) which won the bid for the re­fin­ery, was not re­quired to make sub­mis­sions af­ter the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion was with­drawn. 

The de­ci­sion to with­draw was warm­ly re­ceived by scores of OW­TU mem­bers, who filled the court­room and lined the steps of the Hall of Jus­tice in an­tic­i­pa­tion for the out­come. 

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions, Boodoos­ingh ad­journed the case to No­vem­ber 12, when the par­ties will in­di­cate how they plan to pro­ceed with the case. 

Sturge is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dayadai Har­ri­paul and Umesh Ma­haraj, while Rishi Dass and Am­ri­ta Ram­sook ap­peared along­side Ho­sein for the AG’s Of­fice. Ja­son Mootoo ap­peared along­side Daly, while Ravi Heffes-Doon ap­peared along­side Peake.