KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Just one day af­ter Regi­nald Ar­mour SC took his oath of of­fice as T&T’s lat­est At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress yes­ter­day called on him to “clear the air” over his cit­i­zen­ship and le­gal briefs he re­ceived from the Gov­ern­ment.

In a me­dia brief­ing, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark delved in­to sev­er­al doc­u­ments, ques­tion­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy and cred­i­bil­i­ty of Ar­mour, whom he thought was a neu­tral per­son.

Mark said that he nev­er knew Ar­mour was a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment mem­ber.

Mark pre­sent­ed court records from St Kitts and Nevis, in a mat­ter be­tween the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of that coun­try and Dr Den­zil Dou­glas un­der Sec­tion 36 of the Con­sti­tu­tion and Sec­tion 12 of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Elec­tions Act, Chap­ter 2:01.

He read from para­graph 37, which stat­ed that Ar­mour was a cit­i­zen of the Com­mon­wealth of Do­mini­ca and is an at­tor­ney with over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence prac­tis­ing at the bar of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Do­mini­ca and sev­er­al oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

On this ba­sis, Mark asked Ar­mour to come clean on whether he has dual cit­i­zen­ship and if his birth­place was T&T. If not, he said the Con­sti­tu­tion dis­qual­i­fies him from the port­fo­lio of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“Is this an­oth­er blun­der by our in­com­pe­tent Prime Min­is­ter as we had re­cent­ly with a fel­low called Robert Le Hunte? When he in­stalled Robert Le Hunte, on­ly to find out Robert Le Hunte was a Ghana­ian, and could not be a Ghana­ian and be a cit­i­zen of Trinidad & To­ba­go and be­come Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties,” Mark said.

He re­called Le Hunte fly­ing back to Ghana to de­nounce his cit­i­zen­ship.

Mark al­so ques­tioned the amount of mon­ey the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice owed Ar­mour for le­gal briefs. He said the Op­po­si­tion re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion on le­gal briefs the At­tor­ney’s Gen­er­al’s of­fice is­sued be­tween 2015-2020. For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi pro­duced a doc­u­ment show­ing Ar­mour led the pack with $10 mil­lion.

With Ar­mour rep­re­sent­ing the State on sev­er­al mat­ters since then, Mark wants to know who will pay the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, say­ing the pub­lic needs trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Who is go­ing to pay how much mon­ey is owed to the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al? Is the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al go­ing to pay him­self? These are ques­tions that the pub­lic would like clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, who has now tak­en over from the old at­tor­ney gen­er­al. And I un­der­stand they are very, very close.”

Al­though Mark spent con­sid­er­able time on the reshuf­fle, he said it was a cha­rade de­signed by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Dr Row­ley to dis­tract from the re­al chal­lenges the coun­try faced. He said the shuf­fling of Row­ley’s deck does not change the qual­i­ty of life in T&T.

How­ev­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment wants peo­ple to for­get the “crim­i­nal neg­li­gence” of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny in the deaths of four LCMS divers last month. Mark said while the divers’ fam­i­lies strug­gle, Paria’s chair­man New­man George re­mains in his po­si­tion.

He said it was al­so to dis­tract from Row­ley’s breach of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers in the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice mer­it list mat­ter and his com­mit­ment to in­crease the price of fu­el, with food prices al­ready high.

For­mer UNC sen­a­tor Sean Sobers said Row­ley tried to change the nar­ra­tive from his mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. Sobers said Row­ley erred when he met for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad at Pres­i­dent’s House to re­lay in­for­ma­tion about for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

The PM ac­cept­ed no wrong in his ac­tions but Sobers said Row­ley should have sent cor­re­spon­dence to the PolSC as he did pre­vi­ous­ly.

He said now that Row­ley ad­mit­ted he was the high-rank­ing Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial who passed on in­for­ma­tion, it was time for Seep­er­sad to clear the air on whether she got in­struc­tions or threats.

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