Cleav­on Raphael

Re­cent­ly ap­point­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas is push­ing ahead with plans to launch a Na­tion­al Pros­e­cu­tions Ser­vice based on the Unit­ed King­dom mod­el.A for­mer High Com­mis­sion­er to the Court of St James, Nicholas is of the view that this coun­try des­per­ate­ly needs such an en­ti­ty to speed up de­liv­ery of jus­tice and en­able lawyers work­ing in the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to de­vel­op their pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer path.

Nicholas, who said he was deeply dis­ap­point­ed with the bap­tism of fire that greet­ed him im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter he was ap­point­ed to the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Cab­i­net, point­ed out that in all his pub­lic life he has nev­er sought to em­bell­ish his aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Q: Sen­a­tor Nicholas, to use a crick­et­ing anal­o­gy, can it be said that you are a night watch­man in this of­fice giv­en the ap­prox­i­mate time for the forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion?

A: (Sit­ting in char­ac­ter­is­tic calm with clasped hands and el­bows on the hand rest of his swiv­el chair in the Of­fice of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ear­ly Thurs­day morn­ing) Well, I sup­pose it can be, giv­en the fact that the re­al­i­ty is the gov­ern­ment term comes to an end on an out­side date of Sep­tem­ber, and with me tak­ing up this of­fice in Feb­ru­ary, one can eas­i­ly un­der­stand why that de­scrip­tion is quite cor­rect and I take no of­fence with that.

Very well. Now that you have had one month on the job, what do you see as some of your im­me­di­ate chal­lenges?

Speak­ing the truth, I hit the ground run­ning, have met all the heads of the de­part­ments here, then I went to meet the chief jus­tice, the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and the di­rec­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions. Cer­tain­ly, I have been thrown in­to the deep end and as at­tor­ney gen­er­al I sit on many com­mit­tees so that I have sev­er­al meet­ings dur­ing the en­tire week, but I am ac­cus­tomed to hard work (smiles).

Are you of the view, Mr At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, that giv­en the time frame for the gen­er­al elec­tion, time is short for you to get your agen­da done be­fore the end of the par­lia­men­tary term?

Yes. There are sev­er­al things I would like to see pri­ori­tised. For in­stance, in speak­ing with the DPP on the is­sue of or­gan­is­ing a Na­tion­al Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice, it came out that T&T des­per­ate­ly needs such an en­ti­ty to en­sure that pros­e­cu­tion of cas­es from the mag­is­tra­cy right up, is more ef­fi­cient­ly han­dled.

What does that, Sen­a­tor Nicholas, have to do with the dis­pens­ing of swift jus­tice, which was one of the promis­es by the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion dur­ing the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign?

Well Clevon, the re­al­i­ty is that many things have been done to move the jus­tice sys­tem for­ward, in­clu­sive of the pass­ing of leg­is­la­tion to re­move pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries. But in terms of the qual­i­ty of pros­e­cu­tions, the Na­tion­al Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice, I be­lieve, would as­sist great­ly and al­low for greater ca­reer pro­gres­sion for at­tor­neys who wish to en­ter the DPP of­fice.

Yes, but I don't think the av­er­age cit­i­zen is that in­ter­est­ed in the pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers of at­tor­neys in the of­fice of the DPP?

Even though that may be so, if at­tor­neys are in a sys­tem where they can feel com­fort­able in the ca­reer path they would stay in that sys­tem and by do­ing so they would straight­en the sys­tem. I dis­cussed it with the DPP, and we both agreed that it is need­ed in T&T.

See­ing I have on­ly half hour with you, as you have to at­tend Cab­i­net in a short while, there are some oth­er things that the PP cam­paigned on, such as two terms for the Prime Min­is­ter, the mech­a­nism for hold­ing of ref­er­en­dums. Can we ex­pect all those promis­es would be ful­filled be­fore the ex­pi­ra­tion of the cur­rent par­lia­men­tary term?

(Briefly touch­ing the wed­ding band on his fin­ger) Well, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ment Bill went through both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, it has gone back to the Low­er House to deal with the amend­ments made in the Sen­ate. I sus­pect that the leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness in the Low­er House would soon bring it back to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. I cer­tain­ly en­dorsed pro­vi­sions in the bill which al­so pro­vide for a two-term lim­it for the prime min­is­ter.

What about the ques­tion of cam­paign fi­nance re­form?

I have been ap­point­ed to the par­lia­men­tary sub-com­mit­tee and we will be meet­ing next week, so I will be brought up to date on this and oth­er cur­rent leg­isla­tive mat­ters.

Sen­a­tor Nicholas, you have faced a bap­tism of fire, the on­ly one to get that kind of treat­ment among the re­cent bunch of Cab­i­net ap­pointees, im­me­di­ate­ly on as­sum­ing of­fice. How did you feel about the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against you?

(Wring­ing his palms with a some­what pained ex­pres­sion) Well, I will tell you some­thing; it was ex­treme­ly up­set­ting to me to read and see the be­hav­iour, sim­ply be­cause I have been in pub­lic life for al­most 25 years. I have al­ways tried to con­duct my af­fairs in a trans­par­ent and open man­ner with­out bring­ing any shame to my­self, my fam­i­ly or any­one. With re­gards to my qual­i­fi­ca­tions, I have nev­er mis­rep­re­sent­ed my qual­i­fi­ca­tions and there was an at­tempt to con­vince the pub­lic that I was guilty of that kind of un­be­com­ing be­hav­iour. When I was ap­point­ed High Com­mis­sion­er to the Court of St James' I used my ad­vo­ca­cy and le­gal skills to get a num­ber of things through in the Com­mon­wealth.

How did this ben­e­fit T&T?

Well, for in­stance there was a move to­wards re­mov­ing de­vel­op­men­tal aid from the Com­mon­wealth and there was an in­creas­ing move to­wards re­duc­ing the idea of de­vel­op­ment and in­creas­ing the idea of democ­ra­cy deal­ing main­ly with po­lit­i­cal and hu­man rights is­sues.By so do­ing, larg­er coun­tries like Cana­da and Aus­tralia gave aid to the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries bi­lat­er­al­ly and there­fore ex­ert more po­lit­i­cal pres­sure on de­vel­op­ing states. Steps were made to ease the re­stric­tions on aid to these coun­tries with­out ex­ert­ing that kind of pres­sure.

That was a case which I stood up for, and in so do­ing T&T in­creased its in­flu­ence in the Com­mon­wealth sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

The fact that you are the care­tak­er of the Diego Mar­tin North East con­stituen­cy and on your re­turn from Lon­don you were for a short time care­tak­er of the St Joseph con­stituen­cy, do these moves in­di­cate that you have am­bi­tion to con­test the forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion and would that be a con­flict of in­ter­est in the con­text of you be­ing at­tor­ney gen­er­al?

That is no se­cret and you are aware I con­test­ed Diego Mar­tin North East and that is the most mar­gin­al PNM con­stituen­cy in the coun­try. There­fore it shows that con­stituen­cy is not pre­pared to sit back and say the seat be­longs to any one par­ty.

I have a re­al pas­sion for that area, that is where I grew up and want to see the peo­ple be­com­ing more de­vel­oped and cer­tain­ly I will throw my hat in­to the ring, but it would be up to the screen­ing com­mit­tee to de­cide whether I am a can­di­date or not.

You have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to view at first hand the dif­fer­ences be­tween the coali­tion gov­ern­ments in the UK and T&T. How do they com­pare with each oth­er?

Ac­tu­al­ly, in­ter­est­ing­ly enough we have done slight­ly bet­ter. Our coali­tion came in­to be­ing pri­or the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion while the UK's ver­sion was formed af­ter their gen­er­al elec­tion. There­fore we were able to come to the ta­ble with a com­mon man­i­festo where­as in the UK they have two di­verse man­i­festoes, com­plete­ly two dif­fer­ent sides of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trums. And their coali­tion ran in­to many more prob­lems than ours (Smiles).

How do you view the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal event lat­er this year in T&T?

I think the Part­ner­ship has now set­tled down and there is a very good team in place for mov­ing the coun­try for­ward un­der the as­tute lead­er­ship of the Prime Min­is­ter, which would go along in en­sur­ing that the Part­ner­ship coali­tion would be giv­en its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive term.

This in spite of the pro­pa­gan­da be­ing spread by the Op­po­si­tion, but the peo­ple are see­ing the work this Gov­ern­ment has been putting down through­out the coun­try and I re­peat, through­out the coun­try.