The is­sue sur­round­ing Jus­tice An­tho­ny Car­mona's el­i­gi­bil­i­ty to be nom­i­nat­ed for Pres­i­dent has aroused con­cern among cer­tain le­gal ex­perts about Gov­ern­ment's process, al­though oth­ers be­lieve the is­sue will not haunt Car­mona's pres­i­den­cy or af­fect fu­ture laws to which he may as­sent.De­bate con­tin­ued yes­ter­day af­ter the PNM and oth­ers raised con­cern on Tues­day about Car­mona's el­i­gi­bil­i­ty.

On Tues­day, Car­mona was nom­i­nat­ed un­op­posed for the post of Pres­i­dent by Gov­ern­ment.Al­though the Op­po­si­tion PNM said it sup­port­ed the nom­i­na­tion and did not nom­i­nate any­one, the par­ty lat­er sent a let­ter to Gov­ern­ment ex­press­ing con­cern about Car­mona's el­i­gi­bil­i­ty, in view of his work over­seas with Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies from 2001 to 2004.

The ques­tion was whether he met the cri­te­ri­on in Sec­tion 23 of the Con­sti­tu­tion that he had to be "or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent" in T&T for ten years pre­ced­ing his nom­i­na­tion.At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan sub­se­quent­ly said the Gov­ern­ment had con­sult­ed three se­nior at­tor­neys, Lord Pan­nick, QC, Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, SC, and Michael Beloff, QC, on the is­sue and they unan­i­mous­ly con­clud­ed Car­mona sat­is­fied the cri­te­ri­on.

On whether the sit­u­a­tion might haunt Car­mona's pres­i­den­cy lat­er on and might nev­er tru­ly be put to rest, a promi­nent se­nior coun­sel yes­ter­day told the T&T Guardian con­cerns about his el­i­gi­bil­i­ty were valid.The SC said there were al­so valid con­cerns on whether the law-mak­ing as­pect of a fu­ture Car­mona pres­i­den­cy might be ham­pered or ham­strung by the is­sue.

An­oth­er se­nior coun­sel, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, said he had not stud­ied the mat­ter but said:"Jus­tice Car­mona is a good choice but the process for his elec­tion has been done in such a way so as to cause him grave em­bar­rass­ment since the Gov­ern­ment should have checked all these mat­ters be­fore.

"The can­di­dates for Pres­i­dent should have been out for pub­lic com­ment about a month ago to al­low mem­bers of the pub­lic to ex­press their view. If there were any queries of el­i­gi­bil­i­ty that could have been sort­ed out ear­ly on."He added: "The em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion is that now Gov­ern­ment has to re­ly on le­gal opin­ions when a ques­tion like this has arisen.

"If this was done ear­li­er and the is­sue had arisen, Gov­ern­ment would have had suf­fi­cient time to go to the lo­cal court, seek a spe­cial sit­ting and get three judges to rule on an in­ter­pre­ta­tion sum­mons."This would have pre­vent­ed any doubt as to the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of the Pres­i­dent and avoid­ed a sit­u­a­tion where the view of its for­eign ju­rists might not be ac­cept­ed by the en­tire pop­u­la­tion since le­gal opin­ions dif­fer."

Ma­haraj said Gov­ern­ment had a du­ty to al­low the pop­u­la­tion to know the nom­i­nees and in­volve a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy ap­proach as they have al­ways promised.Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, how­ev­er, said Car­mona could be sworn in as Pres­i­dent since he met the con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­te­ri­on and Gov­ern­ment's le­gal opin­ions from em­i­nent ju­rists in­di­cat­ed that.

He said he be­lieved Car­mona was "or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent" in T&T over the pe­ri­od in which he had as­sign­ments with the UN agen­cies.Once Car­mona was sworn in, Khan said, it meant he had qual­i­fied for the post and met all the cri­te­ria.Once Car­mona be­comes Pres­i­dent, Khan said, if there was any chal­lenge to any law he as­sent­ed to and that was based on his so called "in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty," it would "go down the drain."

"The so-called in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty card can­not be used lat­er once he is sworn in and be­comes Pres­i­dent. There is not any po­ten­tial for a Sec­tion 34 sce­nario here," Khan added. A for­mer high-pro­filed ju­di­cial head al­so said the term "or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent" was flex­i­ble.Mean­while, Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day no oth­er nom­i­na­tion for Pres­i­dent could be lodged once the dead­line had passed on Tues­day.

They said on­ly if there were no can­di­date would the nom­i­na­tion process have to be re­peat­ed.