Fran­cis Joseph

Af­ter suc­ceed­ing be­fore the High Court and the Court of Ap­peal in Trinidad, for­mer Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Dr Lenny Saith went to the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil to set­tle a ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter in favour of Fyz­abad MP Chan­dresh Shar­ma. It was a rare move in the Privy Coun­cil which had set yes­ter­day for the hear­ing of Shar­ma's ap­peal. But the so­lic­i­tors, act­ing for the Min­is­ter, sent a let­ter to Shar­ma's at­tor­neys on Sep­tem­ber 9, seek­ing res­o­lu­tion of the mat­ter and ask­ing for it to be brought to an end. A con­sent or­der was agreed and it was ap­proved by Lords Rodger, Walk­er and Mance.

The Lords con­sid­ered the mat­ter on Oc­to­ber 8 and al­lowed the ap­peal. The or­der, which was re­leased yes­ter­day, stat­ed:

The Board de­clares that the Min­is­ter act­ed in breach of Sec­tion 40(1) of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA), in that the re­ports for 2001-2007 were not laid be­fore Par­lia­ment with­in a rea­son­able time; The Board or­ders that the re­spon­dent (Min­is­ter) should lay the out­stand­ing re­port for 2008 be­fore Par­lia­ment as soon as pos­si­ble and, in any event, not lat­er than De­cem­ber 31, 2009; The Board di­rects that, in the event of the Min­is­ter fail­ing to pro­duce the re­port by the due date, any pro­ceed­ings for en­force­ment of the Board's or­der should be pur­sued be­fore the High Court (in Trinidad).

Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, SC and Anand Ram­lo­gan, in­struct­ed by Asal Vak­ilzadeh, ap­peared for Shar­ma, while James Guthrie, QC, and Lyn­d­sey Mur­ray, in­struct­ed by John Almei­da, rep­re­sent­ed Saith. Ram­lo­gan, when con­tact­ed in Lon­don last night, said: "This is a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry be­cause it is a case I lost in both the High Court and Court of Ap­peal. "The State ob­ject­ed to the grant of leave to al­low this case to go to the Privy Coun­cil and the Court of Ap­peal "re­luc­tant­ly" grant­ed leave to go to the Privy Coun­cil and de­scribed it as "a mar­gin­al case for per­mis­sion to ap­peal." Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment frus­trat­ed and un­der­mined the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act by re­fus­ing to ta­ble an­nu­al re­ports in Par­lia­ment to let the pop­u­la­tion know the ex­tent of non-com­pli­ance by pub­lic bod­ies.

The FOIA, he said, was a pow­er­ful weapon in the hands of cit­i­zens which could be used to en­sure trans­paren­cy and fair­ness in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. On March 6, 2006, Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram, then a tem­po­rary judge, dis­missed Shar­ma's ju­di­cial re­view case. Shar­ma went to the Court of Ap­peal. On June 9, 2008, the Court of Ap­peal, com­pris­ing Jus­tices Roger Hamel-Smith, Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo and Al­lan Men­don­ca, dis­missed his ap­peal and or­dered him to pay costs. As Shar­ma was prepar­ing for the ap­peal in Lon­don, the Min­is­ter's Eng­lish's so­lic­i­tor, Charles Rus­sell, by let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 9, of­fered to set­tle the mat­ter by agree­ing to the de­c­la­ra­tions grant­ed and the pay­ment of costs.

The T&T Guardian was in­formed that hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in costs would be paid out by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice. This was a case in which Shar­ma, a UNC MP, com­plained that the an­nu­al re­ports of the FOIA were not be­ing laid in Par­lia­ment, de­spite queries to the rel­e­vant Min­is­ter. Af­ter nu­mer­ous let­ters to Saith, who was then the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Shar­ma filed for ju­di­cial re­view on June 8, 2005. In the High Court, the judge said Shar­ma had no lo­cus, that there was no breach of Sec­tion 40(1) of the Act, and even if Shar­ma had lo­cus, he was not en­ti­tled to re­lief. The Court of Ap­peal agreed.