Se­nior Coun­sel Avory Sinanan on Friday chas­tised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for not dis­clos­ing the le­gal ad­vice he ob­tained to spare Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie im­peach­ment.

He made his com­ments hours af­ter Row­ley said he would not take ac­tion against Archie based on le­gal ad­vice pro­vid­ed.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Sinanan said he was dis­ap­point­ed how Row­ley han­dled the mat­ter.

“It is open to the Prime Min­is­ter to say that I have re­viewed the ev­i­dence and I see that there is noth­ing as far as I am con­cerned to trig­ger Sec­tion 137. But do not cloud it and sweep it un­der the prover­bial car­pet by say­ing, well, you know, I re­ceived le­gal ad­vice.”

Sinanan said tax­pay­ers paid for that ad­vice and the PM owed it to the cit­i­zen­ry to give de­tails on such.

“Who paid for that ad­vice? It is tax­pay­ers. An ex­pla­na­tion should have been giv­en. In my hum­ble view. He (PM) has fall­en short of that.”

On Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley said he would take no ac­tion against Archie which meant that the call for im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against the Chief Jus­tice had been struck down.

The PM was re­luc­tant to say any­thing on the mat­ter be­cause there is a case (at the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col stage) in which there is an al­le­ga­tion that there is a con­spir­a­cy be­tween him­self and the CJ.

In De­cem­ber 2018, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) wrote Row­ley stat­ing there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sup­port a re­fer­ral un­der Sec­tion 137 for him to de­ter­mine whether a rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Pres­i­dent un­der Sec­tion 137 was war­rant­ed.

It sup­port­ed its ad­vice with the le­gal opin­ions of two re­gion­al ju­rists.

Row­ley sought and re­ceived le­gal ad­vice on the LATT’s and it ad­vised no ac­tion.

Un­der Sec­tion 137, Row­ley has the pow­er to ask the Pres­i­dent to ap­point a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct made against the CJ.

To com­pound mat­ters, Sinanan said the PM missed the mark by politi­cis­ing the is­sue.

“By talk­ing about the UNC trap..... politi­cis­ing it to the ex­tent that it shows very clear­ly that when you sit on the po­lit­i­cal fence too long you suf­fer from po­lit­i­cal haem­or­rhoids.”

Sinanan said the de­ci­sion will no doubt put the coun­try in a state of un­easi­ness “be­cause clear­ly, the re­spect for the Of­fice of the CJ has waned be­cause of these al­le­ga­tions. I don’t know if the av­er­age cit­i­zen in this cli­mate will feel con­fi­dent go­ing be­fore the Court of Ap­peal where the Chief Jus­tice is pre­sid­ing with this cloud hang­ing over his head which has now been re­moved.”

In a nut­shell, Sinanan said the CJ “got a bligh.”

Is­rael Khan, SC al­so shared a sim­i­lar view to Sinanan, stat­ing that the PM owes “the en­tire coun­try a rea­son for not trig­ger­ing a Sec­tion 137 tri­bunal in the light of the se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against the CJ.”

Khan said no one knows who gave that le­gal opin­ion to the PM, which he should not have kept a se­cret.

“The next step is to see if this le­gal opin­ion is sen­si­ble. In the face of all this we have to see if the Prime Min­is­ter is act­ing rea­son­able and if he is not act­ing rea­son­able that law per­mits any cit­i­zen to file for ju­di­cial re­view against his in­ac­tion.”

He said LATT can al­so chal­lenge the le­gal opin­ion if it proves bo­gus.

In re­sponse to the at­tor­ney’s sug­gest­ing to be open and trans­par­ent with the le­gal opin­ion, the PM con­tin­ued to keep the name of the at­tor­ney who ad­vised him close to his chest.

In a thread of What­sApp mes­sages with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Row­ley was told that there have been calls by sev­er­al mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty for him to dis­close who he ob­tained le­gal ad­vice from to which the PM re­spond­ed, “if they were pay­ing at­ten­tion they must heard me say that I did not re­ly on the AG for the ad­vice on this mat­ter.”

Asked whom he got the ad­vice from, Row­ley wrote: “An in­de­pen­dent Se­nior Coun­sel who was sup­plied with all the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to me by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion.”

Asked who was the Se­nior Coun­sel, Row­ley mes­saged: “Didn’t you hear me say on Thurs­day that I will speak to the is­sue again.”

On Fri­day, a ju­di­cial source said judges were shocked and dis­ap­point­ed by the le­gal ad­vice.