It's a re­sound­ing ‘yes’ for three in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor who were asked whether the process to ap­point "silk" should be re­viewed. One of them, a se­nior coun­sel him­self, says sole dis­cre­tion should not re­main with the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, but with a com­mit­tee. 

Fif­teen at­tor­neys re­ceived "silk" last week, in­clud­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Port-of-pain South MP Kei­th Scot­land. A 16th lawyer is ex­pect­ed to be con­ferred with the ho­n­our lat­er.  Since the list of the at­tor­neys to be el­e­vat­ed to se­nior coun­sel was made pub­lic, mem­bers of the pub­lic have crit­i­cised the se­lec­tion of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, once again prompt­ing dis­cus­sions on whether the se­lec­tion process should change. 

Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment be­fore he made his way to the Up­per House on Tues­day, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira, who was crit­i­cised by the Op­po­si­tion when award­ed se­nior coun­sel sta­tus last year, said re­form is nec­es­sary.  

Among his rec­om­men­da­tions, he ad­vised that lawyers across all ar­eas of prac­tice, who are ex­em­plars in that field, should be con­sid­ered. He point­ed out that se­nior coun­sels are typ­i­cal­ly se­lect­ed from crim­i­nal and civ­il law prac­ti­tion­ers, over­look­ing com­mer­cial and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty lawyers, among oth­ers.

Vieira sug­gest­ed that at­tor­neys should have the pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing the ti­tle rather than it be­ing a per­ma­nent ho­n­our. There­fore, he pro­posed that "silk" could be re­viewed, al­low­ing it to be ei­ther main­tained or lost.

The se­nior coun­sel al­so stat­ed that at­tor­neys hop­ing to be el­e­vat­ed to the high­est rank should pos­sess eth­i­cal stan­dards. How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed es­tab­lish­ing an au­thor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for se­lect­ing them.

“I would say a joint com­mit­tee com­pris­ing ju­di­cia­ry, gov­ern­ment, and law as­so­ci­a­tion. Yes! I think we can im­prove more of our process­es by mak­ing them more trans­par­ent, more in­clu­sive,” he said.  

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors Paul Richards and De­oroop Teemal al­so be­lieved that a re­view is es­sen­tial, con­sid­er­ing the con­cerns ex­pressed by those in the pro­fes­sion and the wider pub­lic.

“I think giv­en the furore that seems to be in­ten­si­fy­ing every year, there should be some sought of ex­am­i­na­tion of the process be­cause, to me, every year now it's be­com­ing con­tro­ver­sial for one rea­son or the oth­er,” Richards said. 

“I’m not say­ing that some of the peo­ple who have at­tained 'silk' are not de­serv­ing but more and more you're see­ing peo­ple who are in the le­gal pro­fes­sion and re­spect­ed are rais­ing ques­tions and I think some sort of ex­am­i­na­tion or at­ten­tion should be giv­en and then a de­ter­mi­na­tion made if a change is nec­es­sary to keep the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the award at its high­est,” he added.  

How­ev­er, Teemal agreed with Vieira's com­ments that the prime min­is­ter and at­tor­ney gen­er­al should not have sole dis­cre­tion as they cur­rent­ly have a “big say”. 

"Right now, the ex­ec­u­tive arm of the gov­ern­ment has a big say in who is award­ed 'silk' and I think we have to be look­ing at prob­a­bly de­fin­i­tive process­es where we have more ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions with re­gards to who is se­lect­ed,” he said. 

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor David Nakhid did not hold back his crit­i­cism of this year's awardees.  

“When you have some­body like Faris Al-Rawi, and this has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics, this is ob­vi­ous­ly some­body who has ac­com­plished lit­tle or noth­ing. Like­wise, Stu­art Young. The best of them prob­a­bly would be Kei­th Scot­land, which you just throw in as an af­ter­thought, just to sat­is­fy prob­a­bly the African con­stituen­cy. But, he is the best of the three of them but the oth­er two are use­less. As far as I am con­cerned, is a com­plete sham!” he said.  

“It shouldn’t fall un­der the pur­vey of the prime min­is­ter, for one. As we know our pres­i­dent, es­pe­cial­ly this one, is a rub­ber stamp. So, there should be in­de­pen­dent com­mit­tees that will de­ter­mine who gets 'silk',” Nakhid added.  

LATT pres­i­dent re­sponds

When con­tact­ed for com­ment Tues­day, Law As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Lynette See­baran-Suite de­clined to speak fur­ther on LATT's in­volve­ment with this year's award of "silk" as "it would not be ap­pro­pri­ate." 

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, she said she al­ready ex­plained LATT’s role to her mem­bers. 

In an in­ter­nal memo sent to LATT mem­bers on Mon­day, See­baran-Suite re­vealed that she re­ceived a let­ter from the AG on May 21 in­form­ing that he re­ceived 53 ap­pli­ca­tions for "silk" in re­sponse to an in­vi­ta­tion pub­lished in the Gazette on May 13. 

She said the AG in­di­cat­ed that he in­tend­ed to call for fur­ther dis­cus­sions. In the in­ter­im, she sought the coun­cil's ap­proval around May 24 to ap­proach sev­er­al se­nior coun­sels for their views on which ap­pli­cants would be ap­pro­pri­ate. 

The ex­ec­u­tive ap­proved a list of se­nior coun­sels to ap­proach and based on their avail­abil­i­ty, that co­hort de­ter­mined the num­ber of ap­pli­cants to put for­ward and each pro­vid­ed their se­lec­tions anony­mous­ly. 

The list was fi­nalised and the at­tor­neys whose names would be car­ried for­ward were com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the AG on June 5. See­baran-Suite said on June 14, the AG wrote in­form­ing of the names he in­tend­ed to sub­mit to the Pres­i­dent and there were no fur­ther dis­cus­sions be­fore the an­nounce­ment of the awardees.  

She al­so sought to re­mind them that LATT pro­duced a Silk Re­port in 2015 with rec­om­men­da­tions to re­form the process of con­fer­ring se­nior coun­sel sta­tus to ex­em­plary at­tor­neys. She stressed that they have been at­tempt­ing to ad­vance this cause for years. 

Con­tro­ver­sial process 

The pres­ti­gious ho­n­our of be­ing ad­mit­ted to the In­ner Bar has been shroud­ed in con­tro­ver­sy for years. Last year, the Pres­i­dent's hus­band Ker­wyn Gar­cia and broth­er Col­in Kan­ga­loo were among 17 award­ed se­nior coun­sel. 

In De­cem­ber 2011, then-prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan were both award­ed se­nior coun­sel sta­tus which was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and the pres­i­dent's broth­er, de­ceased ap­pel­late judge Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo were al­so award­ed "silk" among that co­hort but they agreed to re­turn it less than a month lat­er.

Who be­comes a se­nior coun­sel? 

The process to award "silk" was set out in a le­gal no­tice that was gazetted in 1964 be­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came a re­pub­lic. It said the gov­er­nor-gen­er­al would make ap­point­ments to the queen’s coun­sel on the ad­vice of the prime min­is­ter. When an ap­pli­ca­tion was re­ceived, the at­tor­ney gen­er­al was man­dat­ed to con­sult the chief jus­tice or any oth­er body he con­sid­ers nec­es­sary but is not ob­lig­at­ed to do so. Af­ter be­com­ing a re­pub­lic in 1976, the task fell on the Pres­i­dent who re­placed the gov­er­nor-gen­er­al. The name was al­so changed from queen's coun­sel to se­nior coun­sel.  

The process is now be­ing chal­lenged by promi­nent at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan, SC, who on March 7, 2023, brought a claim that the pres­i­dent should not be ad­vised by the Cab­i­net, a min­is­ter or the prime min­is­ter on the award of silk. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion is an in­ter­est­ed par­ty in the case.