Derek Achong

For­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor Wayne Sturge has been giv­en the green light to pur­sue his con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit over Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert's pre­vi­ous 20-month de­lay in call­ing a meet­ing of Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on En­er­gy Af­fairs. 

In a 26-page judge­ment, de­liv­ered elec­tron­i­cal­ly yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh ruled that the court did have the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the case. 

Boodoos­ingh said: "This case con­tem­plat­ed that the court could ful­fil its role as guardian of the Con­sti­tu­tion and at the same time ho­n­our sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and leave Par­lia­ment to its busi­ness as the court per­forms its busi­ness. It is worth re­peat­ing that the court's ju­ris­dic­tion is not to be light­ly sur­ren­dered." 

Boodoos­ingh al­so ruled that Sturge's com­plaint did not fall un­der par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

"There is, in my view, a dif­fer­ence be­tween the pro­ce­dures adopt­ed by a Com­mit­tee, which would fall with­in the am­bit of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege, and the omis­sion to call the Com­mit­tee at all as to whether that fail­ure amounts to a breach of the Con­sti­tu­tion," Boodoos­ingh added, as he main­tained that Par­lia­ment deals with pro­ce­dure and the court with com­pli­ance. 

In his pre­lim­i­nary rul­ing, Boodoos­ingh did not con­sid­er the sub­stan­tive le­gal is­sues raised by Sturge, which will be dealt with when the case even­tu­al­ly goes on tri­al be­fore him. 

In the sub­stan­tive law­suit, Sturge is al­leg­ing that Im­bert's han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion breached the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and ef­fec­tive­ly pre­clud­ed Op­po­si­tion mem­bers from scru­ti­niz­ing the Gov­ern­ment's han­dling of Petrotrin. 

Minister of Finance, COLM IMBERT.

Sturge has al­so sug­gest­ed that Im­bert's de­ci­sion was based on a de­sire to in­su­late his Gov­ern­ment from crit­i­cism. 

While Sturge ad­mits that Par­lia­ment's Stand­ing Or­ders does not give a fixed time-line for the hold­ing of a JSC meet­ing, he claims that the court was still em­pow­ered to re­view Im­bert's po­si­tion. 

Through the law­suit, Sturge is seek­ing de­c­la­ra­tions that Im­bert, as chair­man of the JSC, act­ed un­law­ful­ly, il­le­gal­ly, and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly. 

Sturge ini­tial­ly sought to tem­porar­i­ly block the sale of Petrotrin's Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery but was forced to with­draw the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion min­utes be­fore it was about to be heard by Boodoos­ingh, af­ter Im­bert agreed to set the meet­ing. 

Sturge was rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen, Umesh Ma­haraj, and Dayadai Har­ri­paul. The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Rishi Dass, Kendra Mark-Gor­don, and Am­ri­ta Ram­sook. 

Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Brigid An­nisette-George was rep­re­sent­ed by Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ravi Heffes-Doon, Savi Ramhit, and Di­ane Kat­wa­roo. 

Im­bert was rep­re­sent­ed by Mar­tin Daly, SC, Ja­son Mootoo, and Nairob Smart. 

About Petrotrin

Petrotrin was shut down on No­vem­ber 30, 2018, af­ter record­ing suc­ces­sive loss­es and in­cur­ring bil­lions of dol­lars in debt. 

The State-owned com­pa­ny was split in­to four com­pa­nies- Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ing Lim­it­ed, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, and Guaracara Re­fin­ery Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.  

Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um holds the for­mer com­pa­ny's debt oblig­a­tions, while Her­itage op­er­ates its oil ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion. Paria Fu­el Trad­ing man­ages the trad­ing and mar­ket­ing of im­port­ed fu­el prod­ucts and Guaracara Re­fin­ery Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed holds the re­fin­ery and its as­sets. 

In Sep­tem­ber, last year, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies, owned by the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), won a US$700 mil­lion bid for Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and Guaracara Re­fin­ery. 

As part of the deal, the Gov­ern­ment agreed to a three-year mora­to­ri­um on the pay­ment and gave the com­pa­ny an ad­di­tion­al 10 years to pay the mon­ey at a fair mar­ket in­ter­est rate.