A petition calling for the removal of Law Association president Reginald Armour, SC, and vice-president Gerry Brooks failed to get off the ground yesterday after almost half of the attorneys who initially supported it withdrew their support.
Speaking with media personnel outside the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain, minutes after the association's special general meeting to decide on the petition finished, Armour explained that a dozen of the 30 signatories attended the meeting and indicated that they had been duped into lending their support.
In the petition, the attorneys who drafted it claimed both Armour and Brooks were politically biased based on their alleged failure to speak on several recent legislative measures taken by Government.
Stating the signatures of 25 financial members were required to call a meeting of the association, Armour said the fresh claims by the dissenting signatories led to a vote being taken on whether the meeting should be cancelled.
"Members, who were very irate, declared they had been misled and brought here under false pretences and they voted by majority that the meeting should be declared invalid and irregular because it had been called by a few misguided people," Armour said.
"It is an unfortunate descent by our profession into an undesirable practice by misguided people who are seeking to promote their own individual agendas.
"It is undermining and bring the legal professional into disrepute and I am very happy that today a large assembly of right=thinking rational lawyers rejected this attempt to have the legal profession degenerate into base partizan political nonsense," he added.
Armour said the association's Disciplinary Committee would now have to consider what action, if any, should be taken against the members who recanted on their support and those who elicited it.
"It is something we have to look at. We have to approach it cautiously because it is young people who were misled. It was very tragic," he said.
Brooks also thanked the almost 300 members present for their support at the meeting, which he said showed the association's membership continued to have confidence in its executive.
"We shall continue to work for the benefit of the profession and T&T," Brooks said, as he noted he and other executive members were unfazed by the failed attempt against their leadership.
Armour had previously acted as the attorney for Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley when he was the leader of the Opposition. Brooks is currently the chairman of the National Gas Company (NGC).
Sturge claims victory
In a brief interview after the meeting, United National Congress (UNC) Senator Wayne Sturge, one of the signatories who maintained his support for the motion, said despite the outcome of the meeting the petitioners had achieved what they had set out to do when they drafted the motion.
"We won before it started," Sturge said.
He claimed that Armour and Brooks had been "embarrassed into action," as since the petition was raised they had began to comment on topical issues affecting the association, most recently last weekend when Armour dismissed claims by Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi that some 1,300 prisoners may be in line to be released from prison when the Bail (Amendment) Bill elapsed at the end of next month.
"Before this motion they were silent on issues which favoured the Government. The minute the petition came into existence they started to speak about the Bail (Ammendment) Bill," Sturge said.
He also described the lawyers who withdrew their support as "spineless."
"They should not have honour of calling themselves lawyers. I can't understand how a lawyer can say I signed a document without reading it and then advise their clients not to do so. Lawyers are not supposed to be sheep but lions and I don't know how they could stand up and represent anyone when you are so spineless," Sturge said.
He maintained that the petition was necessary in order to ensure that the association was free from political bias.
"We are all political animals but we should not allow politics to influence our decisions and actions," he said.
In addition to Sturge, the T&T Guardian understands that the petition was also signed by former attorney general Anand Ramlogan, SC, UNC Senator Gerald Ramdeen and former government minister Collin Partap.