The Law Association's motion of no confidence against Attorney General John Jeremie was supported mainly by people who are politically opposed to the ruling PNM administration, senior Government Minister Colm Imbert claimed yesterday. "Mickela Panday, Prakash Ramadhar, Desmond Allum, Vernon de Lima, Garvin Nicholas ..." Imbert said, listing attorneys whom he claimed had voted against Jeremie on Wednesday.
"So there is more to this matter than meets the eye...There is definitely politics in this. "If you look carefully at those who attended the Law Association's meeting at the Hall of Justice on Wednesday you'd see there were a number of known politicians who are in opposition to the PNM and who participated in the vote," he claimed. Imbert was commenting at yesterday's post-Cabinet media briefing on the Law Association's successful no-confidence motion against Jeremie. Imbert said he had spoken to Jeremie, "And he has indicated a number of facts which should be put into the public domain."
Imbert said: "For instance, I'm sure that if Mickela Panday, Prakash Ramadhar or Garvin Nicholas were asked to come to a meeting to discuss and vote on a motion of no confidence against a PNM Attorney General, it's unilkely they would vote any way different to the way they voted on Wednesday." He said out of the approximately 2,000 attorneys in T&T, only about 200 attended the Law Association's meeting. "So the meeting represented ten per cent of the local number of attorneys in T&T," Imbert said. "And approximately 100 persons voted in favour of the no confidence motion. The inescapable conclusion is that if such persons were politically opposed to the PNM, the vote has to be taken in the context that it was not a dispassionate discussion by a learned society dealing with some academic or esoteric thing.
"It was simply a group of politicians who voted against a politician from an opposing party. "It must also be noted that under the Constitution, the AG is appointed by the Prime Minister. "The current leader of the Law Association also made it clear that the AG was not being asked to resign under the motion against him." Imbert said there have been similar situations before. He said a former Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) had complained to the President about a former AG (not under the PNM), but the Law Association did not have a no-confidence motion on this.
He also noted that attorney Desmond Allum, SC, had complained last year about Jeremie's appointment as High Commissioner to London. But the DPP had said there was no basis for the complaint. "They brought their people to the meeting... So clearly those who voted against the AG were politically aligned in opposition to the PNM," Imbert said.