I write in re­sponse to an ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the T&T Guardian of Oc­to­ber 14, en­ti­tled Anand get­ting ex­ces­sive $$ from flawed chil­dren's law–AG.The ar­ti­cle pur­ports to quote AG Faris Al-Rawi's com­ments from his con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate.

His con­tri­bu­tion is not yet avail­able on the Par­lia­ment's web­site and I there­fore can­not ver­i­fy whether the com­ments at­trib­uted to the Ho­n­ourable AG are true and cor­rect. I am, how­ev­er, com­pelled to re­spond to what has been re­port­ed, as it is in­ac­cu­rate and mis­lead­ing and could bring the Of­fice of the AG and the court it­self in­to dis­re­pute.

I do in fact rep­re­sent sev­er­al chil­dren in nov­el and com­plex cas­es that raise se­ri­ous is­sues about the rights of the child. The is­sue is whether it is law­ful for the State to de­tain chil­dren in fa­cil­i­ties that are not con­tem­plat­ed or sanc­tioned by the law. These con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions are pend­ing be­fore the High Court.

The ar­ti­cle states "the for­mer AG came un­der fire from Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad who ques­tioned why he was bring­ing the mat­ters be­fore the Court when it was his gov­ern­ment who had failed to set up com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences."

No re­porter from the T&T Guardian news­pa­per was present in court when the ex parte hear­ing for leave to ap­ply for ju­di­cial re­view was heard on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015. This can be con­firmed with your Ms Yvonne Webb, As­so­ciate Ed­i­tor at­tached to the south of­fice of your news­pa­per who had con­tact­ed my of­fice to en­quire about the hear­ing be­cause no re­porter from the T&T Guardian had at­tend­ed court that day.

That was in fact the on­ly oc­ca­sion in which I ap­peared be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad in con­nec­tion with these mat­ters.I am there­fore as­ton­ished that your news­pa­per can make and such an al­le­ga­tion when no re­porter was present in court for the hear­ing. That such a fab­ri­ca­tion can oc­cur is wor­ry­ing to say the least.

At no time did the Learned Judge make any such com­ment. Had he done so, I would have im­me­di­ate­ly ob­ject­ed and made a com­plaint be­cause it would be high­ly im­prop­er for him to do so.

A judge can­not tell an at­tor­ney who is an Of­fi­cer of the Court rep­re­sent­ing his client any­thing about "his gov­ern­ment" be­cause a gov­ern­ment, once elect­ed, is the gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T un­der the con­sti­tu­tion.

No judge would ques­tion an at­tor­ney on why "he was bring­ing mat­ters be­fore the court when it was his gov­ern­ment that failed to set up com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences." The par­ents on be­half of their chil­dren are the ones who bring the ac­tion in court and not the at­tor­neys.

The AG's con­tri­bu­tion and the com­ments at­trib­uted to the Learned Judge demon­strate a fun­da­men­tal mis­con­cep­tion on the part of the jour­nal­ist, and the AG. No gov­ern­ment was sued in these cas­es but rather the State. It would be fool­ish for any AG or court to speak about a "Gov­ern­ment" in this con­text as it is the State that has guar­an­teed or vi­o­lat­ed a cit­i­zen's con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

As AG, Al-Rawi must be aware that it is high­ly un­eth­i­cal and im­prop­er for him to com­ment on any case against the State whilst it is pend­ing be­fore the courts. That would be, as the tit­u­lar head of the Bar and a par­ty to the case, ex­treme­ly prej­u­di­cial and high­ly im­prop­er. Al-Rawi him­self ad­mit­ted this when he pub­licly re­fused to com­ment on Jack Warn­er's ex­tra­di­tion mat­ter on the ba­sis that it would be im­prop­er for him to do so whilst the mat­ter was be­fore the courts.

The ar­ti­cle states that AG Al-Rawi even went so far as to dis­cuss the ap­pro­pri­ate lev­el of com­pen­sa­tion and hint­ed that the like­ly com­pen­sa­tion could be $250,000 when "He said re­cent court rul­ings show up to $250,000 in dam­ages was award­ed re­cent­ly to a com­plainant. This means that tax­pay­ers may have to fork out more than $18 mil­lion in dam­ages."

This is not on­ly a breach of the sub ju­dice rule that pre­vents mem­bers of Par­lia­ment from dis­cussing a mat­ter whilst it is be­fore the court–it can be seen as an at­tempt to prej­u­dice and in­flu­ence the court on the is­sue of the ap­pro­pri­ate award of com­pen­sa­tion.The Speak­er ought to have in­ter­vened and stopped the AG on the ba­sis of the clear in­fringe­ment of the sub ju­dice rule.

That she failed to do so is an in­dict­ment on the Par­lia­ment and her of­fice as it is a clear vi­o­la­tion of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers that pro­hibits the Par­lia­ment from dis­cussing mat­ters with­in the do­main of the Ju­di­cia­ry.

That the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has re­mained silent on this egre­gious vi­o­la­tion is un­for­tu­nate­ly not sur­pris­ing hav­ing re­gard to the fact that the Pres­i­dent is the for­mer at­tor­ney of the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM and the vice-pres­i­dent is now com­fort­ably en­sconced as the chair­man of a state en­ter­prise be­ing ap­point­ed by the PNM.

In all of this, my fo­cus is on the rights of the child and any vi­o­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion that might have oc­curred. It is un­for­tu­nate that this is­sue ap­pears to have been lost in the rush to score cheap po­lit­i­cal points.

For avoid­ance of doubt, I re­signed from the of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al with ef­fect from the 2nd day of Feb­ru­ary 2015. The leg­is­la­tion in ques­tion was pro­claimed long af­ter my de­par­ture and it is the lack of im­ple­men­ta­tion by the State that is in is­sue. As an at­tor­ney in pri­vate prac­tice, I am well with­in my rights to rep­re­sent clients in mat­ters against the State. There is am­ple prece­dent for this as many of my pre­de­ces­sors have done so with­out any sim­i­lar crit­i­cism.

The AG will do well to fo­cus his ef­forts on rem­e­dy­ing the sit­u­a­tion in­stead of com­ment­ing on the case out­side of the court. Of course, it is al­ways open to AG Al-Rawi to rep­re­sent the State him­self (as I did when I was AG) against me in this mat­ter so that I can prop­er­ly deal with his com­ments in a court of law.

A copy of this let­ter is be­ing sent to the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice, the Ho­n­ourable Mis­ter Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Pres­i­dent of Law As­so­ci­a­tion.

Ed­i­tor's note: The mat­ter of Anand Ram­lo­gan's in­volve­ment, as for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, in the pi­lot­ing of the bill which led to the law in ques­tion in the cur­rent case was raised by the judge in­volved in the case dur­ing the course of these pro­ceed­ings. How­ev­er, Ram­lo­gan, one of the at­tor­neys in­volved in the lit­i­ga­tion, was not in court at that time.