Gail Alexan­der

All po­lit­i­cal par­ties, groups and as­so­ci­a­tions in T&T should come to­geth­er to mo­bilise the pub­lic to force the re­moval of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie fol­low­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion's large vote of no con­fi­dence against Je­re­mie, ac­cord­ing to Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day yes­ter­day. "No At­tor­ney Gen­er­al should be will­ing to stay in of­fice if the lawyers of the coun­try do not want him and have no con­fi­dence in him," Pan­day de­clared yes­ter­day.

Pan­day spoke fol­low­ing Wednes­day's Law As­so­ci­a­tion meet­ing which passed a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in Je­re­mie con­cern­ing his re­port­ed bat­tle with for­mer Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son. Lawyers vot­ed 106 to 82 in favour of the mo­tion, that they have ab­solute­ly no con­fi­dence in Je­re­mie. By a vote of 121 to 67, they al­so con­demned re­port­ed at­tempts by Je­re­mie to im­prop­er­ly and il­le­gal­ly in­ter­fere with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es. And by vote of 127 to 59, lawyers fur­ther con­demned re­port­ed at­tempts by Je­re­mie to un­der­mine and threat­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence in the of­fice of DPP.

Pan­day said, "Any At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would re­lin­quish his of­fice in those cir­cum­stances. There­fore Je­re­mie should do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign, if on­ly be­cause he will not re­al­ly be able to func­tion as he can­not en­joy the con­fi­dence of the lawyers." He added, "But worse, I don't think Je­re­mie en­joys the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic ei­ther. I am sure of one thing how­ev­er, that he is not go­ing to re­sign vol­un­tar­i­ly and the Prime Min­is­ter is not go­ing to re­move him un­less he is forced to do so." Pan­day con­tin­ued, "I think there­fore that a pub­lic cam­paign must im­me­di­ate­ly be mount­ed to force the Prime Min­is­ter to re­move him. I think the lead­ers of the coun­try–from po­lit­i­cal par­ties, groups and pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tions–should meet for the pur­pose of mo­bil­is­ing the pop­u­la­tion for the re­moval of the AG."

He con­firmed that he meant groups like the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­ers.

Asked if that in­clud­ed COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an, the re­ply from Pan­day was: "Of course. Dook­er­an is a leader of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty." Pan­day added, "The votes that came in from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion's meet­ing is a huge ex­pres­sion of no con­fi­dence. When Je­re­mie said he can­not be re­moved, it means that the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has no le­gal or con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er to re­move him and the on­ly per­sons who can do that are him­self or the Prime Min­is­ter.

"But the pop­u­la­tion can mount enough pres­sure for the PM to re­move Je­re­mie."

For the op­po­si­tion's part, a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against Je­re­mie which the UNC filed re­cent­ly, is ex­pect­ed to qual­i­fy for de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with­in the next cou­ple weeks. How­ev­er, Pan­day said, "We ful­ly ex­pect by the time it qual­i­fies for de­bate the Gov­ern­ment may well an­nounce that it's time for the usu­al mid-year par­lia­men­tary break." Pan­day was dis­mis­sive of Je­re­mie's "de­fend­ers" in the Law as­so­ci­a­tion vote. Pan­day said, "The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port not­ed that Dana See­ta­hal re­ceived about $1.2 mil­lion in briefs over sev­er­al years and one of the is­sues of con­cern where Is­rael Khan was in­volved, was the al­leged hir­ing of at­tor­neys over the head of the DPP."