Fran­cis Joseph

Re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal An­tho­ny Lucky has de­scribed the non-gazetting of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry as a tragedy of over­sight. In his re­port, which was pre­sent­ed to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie last Wednes­day, Lucky said: "I have to men­tion that the more I re­view the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this in­quiry, and the in­ter­views with the par­ties sum­moned in this mat­ter, the more I am con­vinced that this is the clas­sic case of each of the rel­e­vant par­ties think­ing the oth­er or oth­ers had com­plied with the re­quire­ments of the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry Act. "It a clas­sic case of lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, as­sump­tions and pre­sump­tions, in­ad­ver­tence that re­sult­ed in a cru­cial re­quire­ment be­ing over­looked for just un­der a year," he said.

"In the cir­cum­stances, I can­not as­cribe sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to any spe­cif­ic per­son or per­sons. I find that the fail­ure to gazette the com­mis­sion is a tragedy of over­sight." The Uff in­quiry closed on Thurs­day with chair­man John Uff, QC, promis­ing to present his re­port to the Pres­i­dent by the end of Feb­ru­ary 2010. Lucky, who was re­tained by the Gov­ern­ment to in­ves­ti­gate why the in­quiry was not gazetted, could not be reached yes­ter­day as he was out of the coun­try. Lucky, a judge of the In­ter­na­tion­al Tri­bunal for the Law of the Sea (IT­LOS), said in his re­port: "What I do rec­om­mend is that who­ev­er is ap­point­ed, es­pe­cial­ly le­gal coun­sel, has a du­ty to ful­ly ac­quaint him­self with the pro­vi­sions of the Act, the law and prac­tice, and must per­form his func­tions in such a man­ner that the law and prac­tice are strict­ly ad­hered to."

ABOVE: ?Jus­tice An­tho­ny luck­yThe for­mer judge said it had al­so been drawn to his at­ten­tion that the Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go did not have a per­ma­nent le­gal ad­vis­er or in-house coun­sel. "The ma­jor­i­ty, if not all, of His Ex­cel­len­cy's de­ci­sions have a le­gal un­der­pin­ning or may re­quire knowl­edge of the rel­e­vant re­quire­ments of the law (the in­stant mat­ter is an ex­am­ple)," he said. "There­fore, I rec­om­mend that in-house coun­sel should be ap­point­ed to ad­vise His Ex­cel­len­cy if and when le­gal mat­ters arise." Dur­ing his probe, Lucky in­ter­viewed the fol­low­ing peo­ple: At­tor­neys Seenath Jairam, SC, Ker­wyn Gar­cia, Ian Roach, Mar­vo Harp­er, Garvin Si­mon­ette, Ju­dith Gon­za­lves, the com­mis­sion's sec­re­tary, and Ida Ever­s­ley, As­sis­tant Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel. �

?The probe:

?By let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 10, 2009, Lucky was ap­point­ed to in­quire in­to the rea­sons why the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) and the con­struc­tion sec­tor had not been pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette.

?What Lucky found:

?1. First­ly, there was an over­sight by the sec­re­tari­at at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter where the ap­point­ment of the com­mis­sion should have been sent to the gov­ern­ment print­er for pub­li­ca­tion in the Gazette.

2. Sec­ond­ly, there was an over­sight by the sec­re­tari­at at the Pres­i­dent's of­fice where gazetting should have been ver­i­fied be­fore His Ex­cel­len­cy was asked to sign the in­stru­ments.

3. Third­ly, the sec­re­tary to the com­mis­sion should have en­sured com­pli­ance with the Act.

4. Fourth­ly, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al at the time should have en­sured that the no­tice was sent to the gov­ern­ment print­ers and that the no­tice was pub­lished.

5. Fifth­ly, coun­sel to the com­mis­sion should have checked the doc­u­ments to ver­i­fy that a no­tice had been pub­lished.

6. Sixth­ly, the com­mis­sion­ers them­selves ought to have ver­i­fied that there was com­pli­ance with the Act be­fore pro­ceed­ings com­menced.