Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has act­ed cow­ard­ly in the way it ad­dressed the con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing the Vin­cent Nel­son in­dem­ni­ty mat­ter. She made the re­marks in a state­ment is­sued Sat­ur­day.

"The coun­cil of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has wast­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use their weight as pro­tec­tors of the Rule of Law and pro­mot­ers of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice to firm­ly call out those mem­bers of their own Bar who have been found want­i­ng and to pub­licly de­nounce their con­duct.

· Their long over­due state­ment, which had to be dragged out of them, was pusil­lan­i­mous eva­sion and sim­ply re­peat­ed what we al­ready know.

· It was an ex­er­cise in cow­ardice in that it cun­ning­ly avoid­ed call­ing to ac­count PNM lawyers Dou­glas Mendes and Gilbert Pe­ter­son for their roles in this scan­dal. Dou­glas Mendes has pre­vi­ous­ly led the PNM le­gal team while Gilbert Pe­ter­son is the per­son­al at­tor­ney and In­ez Gate neigh­bour of Kei­th Row­ley.

· It was point­less in that it calls up­on dis­graced Regi­nald Ar­mour to an­swer ques­tions via a press re­lease, with­out say­ing if they have writ­ten to him de­mand­ing an­swers.

· How can the LATT call on Regi­nald Ar­mour to pro­vide an un­am­bigu­ous state­ment when he him­self has been im­pli­cat­ed in this scan­dal by Faris Al Rawi?

· What the LATT has stat­ed can on­ly be de­scribed as “in­de­pen­dent” sen­a­tor chat­ter - cow­ard­ly and suf­fi­cient­ly vague so as con­tin­ue in the good graces of the state’s le­gal gravy train while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tect­ing self-in­ter­ests and those of some of their col­leagues.

· De­spite the abun­dance of ev­i­dence, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has cun­ning­ly of­fered the dis­graced mem­bers of Cab­i­net, Faris Al Rawi, Regi­nald Amour, Stu­art Young, Fitzger­ald Hinds, Renu­ka Sagra­mas­ingh as well as their PNM le­gal col­leagues Dou­glas Mendes and Gilbert Pe­ter­son even more time – with­out any dead­line – to po­lit­i­cal­ly ma­noeu­vre and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate spin and dis­trac­tion.

This is a rogue, out-of-con­trol, dic­ta­to­r­i­al regime which be­lieves the Con­sti­tu­tion or law does not ap­ply to them and is on­ly there to be used to se­cure their po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er.

It tru­ly is a chill­ing mo­ment for the democ­ra­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go when the LATT will not vig­or­ous­ly de­fend the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens from per­se­cu­tion.

The right-think­ing cit­i­zens of our coun­try to­day cry shame on the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go for their dis­hon­ourable cow­ardice in the face of the worst con­sti­tu­tion­al scan­dal in our coun­try's 60-year in­de­pen­dent his­to­ry."