House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George will have to de­fend her de­ci­sion to refuse po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj per­mis­sion to re­spond to al­leged­ly defam­a­to­ry com­ments made against him in Par­lia­ment.

Last week, Ma­haraj made good on his threat to sue An­nisette-George over her de­ci­sion. 

The case, al­so brought against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, has since been as­signed to High Court Judge Joan Charles. It is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing when the new law term opens next month. 

Ma­haraj’s law­suit stems from his re­quest to re­spond to com­ments made by Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, SC, while ad­dress­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on April 26. 

Scot­land claimed that the State had ex­pend­ed a lit­tle over $14 mil­lion in de­fend­ing lit­i­ga­tion from Ma­haraj over the health­care sys­tem. He al­so con­tend­ed that Ma­haraj’s law­suit af­fect­ed health­care work­ers, who had to take time off their jobs to re­spond to his “friv­o­lous and vex­a­tious” claims. 

Scot­land was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. 

Ma­haraj’s lawyers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, la­belled Scot­land’s com­ments a “scathing and ma­li­cious at­tack.”

“The al­le­ga­tions made by Mr Scot­land were plain­ly defam­a­to­ry. The sub­ject mat­ter of the com­men­tary and his pro­posed re­sponse there­to was plain­ly not triv­ial, friv­o­lous, vex­a­tious or of­fen­sive in char­ac­ter,” they said. 

They claimed that Ma­haraj wrote to An­nisette-George seek­ing to place his po­si­tion on the is­sue on the Hansard on May 3. 

In his re­quest, Ma­haraj point­ed out that he nev­er filed the cas­es as­cribed to him by Scot­land. 

He not­ed that he filed a hand­ful of cas­es un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for the dis­clo­sure of the le­gal fees paid by re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties to de­fend med­ical neg­li­gence cas­es.

He claimed that the cas­es were dealt with by the au­thor­i­ties’ Le­gal and Ac­count­ing de­part­ments and not doc­tors and nurs­es, as al­leged by Scot­land. 

At­tached to the case were two let­ters sent by Clerk of the House Bri­an Cae­sar on May 10 and 16, in which he com­mu­ni­cat­ed Anisette-George’s de­ci­sion to refuse him ap­proval.

Ma­haraj’s lawyers re­ferred to Or­der 18 of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Stand­ing Or­ders, which states the pro­ce­dure for a non-mem­ber to ap­ply to have their views placed on the Par­lia­men­tary record if they claim that their per­son­al or pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion was tar­nished dur­ing a pre­vi­ous de­bate. 

The or­der states that in de­cid­ing whether to grant a re­quest, the House Speak­er must con­sid­er the ex­tent to which the ref­er­ence is ca­pa­ble of ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the in­di­vid­ual’s rep­u­ta­tion, whether the mat­ter is triv­ial, and whether their in­tend­ed sub­mis­sion is friv­o­lous, vex­a­tious, or of­fen­sive in char­ac­ter. 

The House Speak­er may al­so con­fer with the per­son seek­ing to make the sub­mis­sion and with the mem­ber who re­ferred to the ap­pli­cant. 

Ma­haraj’s lawyers not­ed that the stand­ing or­der was an im­por­tant right giv­en to cit­i­zens as MPs were clothed with par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege, which in­su­lat­ed them against le­gal ac­tions for defam­a­to­ry state­ments made with­in Par­lia­ment.

They not­ed that An­nisette-George did not pro­vide any rea­sons for her de­ci­sion, as they sug­gest­ed there was no law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. 

“You have there­fore abused your dis­cre­tion by adopt­ing an ap­proach which not on­ly de­nies our client the right of re­ply but fur­ther­more, demon­strates that you are con­tent to al­low the Min­is­ter’s false­hoods to re­main on the Hansard with­out refu­ta­tion or cor­rec­tion,” they said.

They al­so re­ferred to the fact that An­nisette-George’s hus­band New­man George was ap­point­ed as Di­rec­tor of the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, Chair­man of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, and Chair­man of the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny by the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. 

“The risk of bias meant that the Speak­er was oblig­ed to sub­ject the Claimant’s ap­pli­ca­tion for a right to re­ply to a greater form of anx­ious scruti­ny bear­ing in mind the ex­tent of the ad­verse im­pact her de­ci­sion would have on his cred­i­bil­i­ty, char­ac­ter and rep­u­ta­tion and the ero­sion of pub­lic con­fi­dence that would re­sult from an ad­verse, un­ex­plained de­ci­sion in light of the re­al risk of con­scious and or un­con­scious bias,” they said.

Through the law­suit, Ma­haraj is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the de­ci­sion and or­der com­pelling An­nisette-George to re­con­sid­er her de­ci­sion. 

Ma­haraj is al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram, Vishaal Siewsaran and Aasha Ram­di­al.