Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day re­fused the Op­po­si­tion’s call for him to name the peo­ple who were un­suc­cess­ful in ob­tain­ing se­nior coun­sel rank, as he said their names should not be called in Par­lia­ment to be scan­dalised.

Row­ley did so in Par­lia­ment while re­ply­ing to UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein’s ques­tions on the is­sue.

Fol­low­ing this week’s ap­point­ment of se­nior coun­sel by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Ho­sein called on Row­ley to pro­vide a com­plete list of all the ap­pli­cants.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment, through its of­fi­cials, had in­di­cat­ed the process in great de­tail and 57 peo­ple ap­plied, as well as the num­ber se­lect­ed. He said he as Prime Min­is­ter, “...refuse to call their names in Par­lia­ment so that they might be scan­dalised.”

“I think if peo­ple ap­ply for ‘silk’ and they were un­suc­cess­ful, their names should not be called in the Par­lia­ment to be scan­dalised,” Row­ley added.

On an­oth­er query, Row­ley said the date on which the fi­nal list of ap­pli­cants to be ap­point­ed se­nior coun­sel was sub­mit­ted to him by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was May 2.

Ho­sein al­so asked AG Regi­nald Ar­mour to state the names of the se­nior Law As­so­ci­a­tion of­fi­cials he had dis­cus­sions with on ap­pli­cants for “silk” and when. AG Ar­mour said this was Dou­glas Mendes, who was del­e­gat­ed that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by LATT pres­i­dent Lynette See­baran-Suite, who had re­cused her­self. This was on May 2.

Mean­while, Ho­sein al­so filed a mo­tion yes­ter­day seek­ing to have AG Ar­mour tak­en to Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for al­leged­ly mis­lead­ing Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee last week in pre­sent­ing cer­tain in­for­ma­tion on le­gal fees.

Ho­sein said he had asked Ar­mour when he would pro­vide a list of all of the at­tor­neys who would be col­lect­ing fees, as he had un­der­tak­en to so pro­vide at the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Oc­to­ber 11th, 2022.

“I fur­ther in­formed the SFC that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al did not pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion to Par­lia­ment as he promised.”

Ho­sein claimed Ar­mour re­spond­ed that he had pro­vid­ed a record to Par­lia­ment of a sum­ma­ry list­ing for June 19th, 2021 to March 3rd, 2023, with the names of at­tor­neys and fees and the in­for­ma­tion had al­ready been pro­vid­ed.

But Ho­sein said the Op­po­si­tion did not see it and the record was not placed on the Ro­tun­da, as is cus­tom­ar­i­ly done, nor did search­es yield it. He claimed Ar­mour “de­lib­er­ate­ly made a mis­lead­ing state­ment” and com­mit­ted con­tempt of the Par­lia­ment.

Deputy House Speak­er Es­mond Forde said a rul­ing would be giv­en at a sub­se­quent time.