Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Many ques­tions need to be an­swered in the im­broglio in­volv­ing the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, af­ter the lat­est com­ment in the mat­ter from Archie raised more is­sues about the per­for­mance of the of­fice.

And Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein is now call­ing on the DPP to break his si­lence on al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against him.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ho­sein ques­tioned whether the DPP’s de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue charges against Op­po­si­tion mem­bers in cas­es re­cent­ly was the rea­son be­hind the at­tacks against him.

“We now must ask the ques­tion whether or not the de­ci­sion by Mr Roger Gas­pard to drop the charges against Mr Pan­day in the Pi­ar­co Three mat­ter and the oth­er ac­cused, the de­ci­sion tak­en to dis­con­tin­ue the pros­e­cu­tion of Mr Anand Ram­lo­gan and Mr Ger­ald Ramdeen, is the rea­son why there is an at­tempt now to hound and ha­rass Mr Gas­pard out of of­fice by the PNM? We must ask that ques­tion—whether this is his­to­ry re­peat­ing it­self be­cause once Mr Gas­pard goes, then the Deputy DPP will now act as the DPP and I say no more on that mat­ter,” Ho­sein said at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion in Port-of-Spain.

He added, “What I call on this morn­ing is for the DPP to break his si­lence on this mat­ter. We have heard from the Chief Jus­tice, we have heard from the Prime Min­is­ter and we have heard from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. We must now hear from Mr Roger Gas­pard Se­nior Coun­sel, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, on this en­tire is­sue be­cause se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions are be­ing made against your con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed of­fice...the DPP must break his si­lence.”

Ho­sein said this isn’t too far-fetched, not­ing there is his­to­ry of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tions pres­sur­ing DPPs in­to pros­e­cut­ing po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents. He cit­ed 2006 cor­re­spon­dences be­tween then-DPP, Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son sent then-AG John Je­re­mie.

Ho­sein read ex­cerpts from a cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the two par­ties in a let­ter dat­ed No­vem­ber 9, 2006.

“The ad­vice rec­om­mend­ed that crim­i­nal charges be laid against Bas­deo Pan­day, at that time, I was not sat­is­fied that charges could be prop­er­ly laid. This view was al­so held by Sir Tim­o­thy Cas­tle, who led the pros­e­cu­tion in the Pan­day tri­al,” he said Hen­der­son wrote to Je­re­mie ex­press­ing con­cerns about the strength of the case.

Read­ing from a let­ter dat­ed De­cem­ber 6, Ho­sein said Hen­der­son wrote to Je­re­mie again.

“I am not sub­ject to your di­rec­tions. Your con­tin­ued ef­forts to have me ini­ti­ate charges against cer­tain per­sons are high­ly im­prop­er and should they con­tin­ue, it can im­per­il the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of any charge ini­ti­at­ed in the mat­ters un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. You are re­fer­ring to per­sons as­so­ci­at­ed in one way or an­oth­er with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that is in op­po­si­tion to the gov­ern­ment. It is, there­fore, more im­per­a­tive that any de­ci­sion to pros­e­cute is not on­ly in­de­pen­dent but must be seen to be,” Hen­der­son said.

DPP Gas­pard has come un­der fire from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, who pub­licly chas­tised him in a 10-page re­lease on Fri­day night, af­ter he com­plained about staff short­ages af­fect­ing his Of­fice’s abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly func­tion.

PM Row­ley, dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, had com­plained that the DPP had re­fused to move to a new of­fice lo­ca­tion which the Gov­ern­ment lo­cat­ed for it de­spite mod­er­a­tions to the build­ing. Ar­mour, mean­while, said the DPP’s com­plaints about staffing should not be used as an ex­cuse for the un­der­per­for­mance of the DPP’s Of­fice. The com­ment by Ar­mour in­censed the at­tor­ney in the DPP’s Of­fice and they de­liv­ered a let­ter to him last week call­ing for an apol­o­gy, not­ing that they op­er­ate un­der stress­ful sce­nar­ios due to staffing and oth­er woes.

Archie, like Ar­mour, has blamed the staff cri­sis at the DPP’s Of­fice and the neg­a­tive im­pact on the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem on Gas­pard.

Archie, al­so chair­man of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC), in a state­ment on Fri­day, said he felt com­pelled to make a state­ment to ad­dress “mis­con­cep­tions that are cir­cu­lat­ing in the pub­lic do­main re­gard­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.” Archie said the DPP had per­formed poor­ly in fill­ing va­can­cies in his de­part­ment and putting for­ward names and req­ui­site ap­praisals to pro­mote in­di­vid­u­als.

How­ev­er, Ho­sein yes­ter­day said this was an un­pro­voked at­tack from the Chief Jus­tice which nev­er should have hap­pened.

“This was a po­lit­i­cal fight be­tween the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Prime Min­is­ter and the DPP. I can’t un­der­stand the Chief Jus­tice would now make such a state­ment with re­spect to what is tak­ing place in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” he said.

“The Chief Jus­tice ought not to de­scend in­to a po­lit­i­cal gayelle where a po­lit­i­cal fight is tak­ing place.”

Ho­sein al­so slammed the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for what he called their un­so­licit­ed po­lit­i­cal at­tack against the DPP and his of­fice, es­pe­cial­ly the lat­ter.

“While these big men fight in high of­fices, the crim­i­nals are laugh­ing,” he said.

Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan told Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day that he too be­lieves the DPP must an­swer to the ac­cu­sa­tions made against him but lament­ed the CJ’s in­volve­ment in the pub­lic bat­tle.

“It is very un­for­tu­nate that the Chief Jus­tice (CJ) jumped in­to this is­sue at this point in time and chose to do it the way he did it. The coun­try will al­ways be scep­ti­cal of what the CJ has to say in re­la­tion to mat­ters like this be­cause he is ob­lig­at­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter for not trig­ger­ing (sec­tion) 137 in or­der to as­cer­tain whether he mis­be­haved in pub­lic of­fice, so he is ob­lig­at­ed to the PM.”