Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

New­ly-ap­point­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan promis­es the abo­li­tion of the prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion and an up­date about Calder Hart to the pop­u­la­tion by the end of this week.

He said re­peal­ing the prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion which was in­tro­duced but not im­ple­ment­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion was a top pri­or­i­ty. Ram­lo­gan, 37, is the 14th at­tor­ney gen­er­al to be sworn in­to of­fice. He took over the helm from John Je­re­mie, SC, at Ca­bil­do Cham­bers, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Ram­lo­gan said while a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, he had the plea­sure of be­ing lec­tured to by Je­re­mie. While shak­ing hands at the of­fi­cial hand­ing over of of­fice, Ram­lo­gan told Je­re­mie: "Thank you for the fine work you have done and the ser­vice to your coun­try."

Je­re­mie in turn wished his suc­ces­sor "all the best." The two who had been in an ear­li­er lengthy dis­cus­sion emerged around 2.45 pm to await­ing me­dia.

Af­ter the quick ex­change, Je­re­mie im­me­di­ate­ly ex­it­ed the room re­fus­ing to an­swer ques­tions from the me­dia. He said: "I'm not tak­ing ques­tions. The torch has been passed to the new gen­er­a­tion." Ram­lo­gan then re­spond­ed to ques­tions about sev­er­al is­sues for about five min­utes. Quizzed about the ex­tra­di­tion of busi­ness­men Ish Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son, Ram­lo­gan said he was yet to be briefed. On Calder Hart, he said: "Mr Je­re­mie and I did dis­cuss the Calder Hart is­sue and I will be re­ceiv­ing a re­port on that mat­ter short­ly and when I have ap­prised my­self as to where we are with that mat­ter, rest as­sured the pop­u­la­tion will be hear­ing from me on it." He added he ex­pect­ed to be briefed on that is­sue and all oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions by his min­istry and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions by the end of this week.

Apart from the re­moval of the prop­er­ty tax "in a mat­ter of days," oth­er top pri­or­i­ties were the dis­tri­b­u­tion of lap­tops to stu­dents who wrote the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment which Ram­lo­gan de­scribed as "high up on the agen­da," health­care and crime, in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment's 120-day plan. The new AG said his dis­cus­sion with Je­re­mie was "sa­cred and con­fi­den­tial," and "would rather not delve in­to what the na­ture of the dis­cus­sion was."

Re­spond­ing to the ques­tion of roles of the Min­istry of Jus­tice and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, Ram­lo­gan said it was some­thing that would be worked out. "We have al­ready con­struct­ed the ar­chi­tec­ture for the three min­istries which are meant to op­er­ate in tan­dem with each oth­er so that we will have a for­mi­da­ble le­gal arm of the State that will be able to sim­pli­fy the op­er­a­tions of the le­gal as­sault which we in­tend to car­ry out on all wrong do­ing in this coun­try," he said. Asked about an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­tro­ver­sial church in the Heights of Gua­napo and doc­u­ments which Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed she had re­ceived, Ram­lo­gan said: "Spe­cif­ic ques­tions re­gard­ing these projects and any project man­agers that may be in­volved will be ad­dressed in due course."