At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi is en­dors­ing the view of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that there is pol­i­tics at play in the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to pur­sue a ju­di­cial re­view against Row­ley for not in­vok­ing Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion to al­low an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­leged mis­con­duct by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the open­ing of South ex­hi­bi­tion at Gulf City, San Fer­nan­do, on Wednes­day, Al-Rawi al­so echoed Row­ley’s sen­ti­ments that the ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings were a waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

“The Law As­so­ci­a­tion is propos­ing a ju­di­cial re­view of the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion not to in­voke the Sec­tion 137 con­di­tions. Un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter is the per­son­al­i­ty vest­ed with the con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er to trig­ger that in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The law set out in a Privy Coun­cil rul­ing tells us what the stages of that de­vel­op­ment ought to look like and what fac­tors should be con­sid­ered in in­vok­ing a Sec­tion 137 ap­pli­ca­tion, “ Al-Rawi said, adding it is not to be tak­en light­ly.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that while the ap­pli­ca­tion was a law­ful and con­sti­tu­tion­al process, the mat­ter will be a waste of time and mon­ey.

“As to whether the Law As­so­ci­a­tion is act­ing im­prop­er­ly, no, they are not. Whether they have been hi­jacked is an­oth­er view that one could ex­plore,” he said.

Al-Rawi said from the small turnout for the vote, it ap­peared that those in favour of the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pear to be in a mi­nor­i­ty.

“165 out of 5,000 lawyers car­ried a vote. The le­gal ad­vice that LATT op­er­at­ed on, which I have seen, is that you can cross the first thresh­old of ju­di­cial re­view but you have se­ri­ous prob­lems at the sub­stan­tive hear­ing,” he said.

“You can get leave for ju­di­cial re­view on the ba­sis that you have an ar­guable case but the writ­ten ad­vice says you have sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems in the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion it­self.”

Al-Rawi in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that there were po­lit­i­cal fac­tors to con­sid­er and “it would be wise to con­nect the dots.”

“The fact is the al­le­ga­tion that is be­ing ex­plored con­cerns an al­le­ga­tion of bias on the part of the CJ on an­oth­er mat­ter which is be­fore Court of Ap­peal, which is a mat­ter brought on by the UNC in an at­tempt to set aside an elec­tion pe­ti­tion re­sult some four years af­ter the re­sult,” Al-Rawi said.

Asked whether he was in­sin­u­at­ing that the Law As­so­ci­a­tion was an­ti-Gov­ern­ment, the AG said, “No, I don’t think LATT is an­ti-Gov­ern­ment, it is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tion. It is fa­cil­i­tat­ing a process, I don’t as­cribe any malfea­sance to the pres­i­dent of the LATT. “

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted to be­ing con­cerned about a po­lit­i­cal link.

“There is a court mat­ter seek­ing to set aside the elec­tion pe­ti­tion in the case of Shiv­anand Gob­in vs Faris Al-Rawi which says the elec­tion pe­ti­tion re­sult should be set aside on an al­le­ga­tion of bias, where they say the CJ sup­pos­ed­ly asked for hous­ing and he was bi­ased. There is an ob­vi­ous con­nec­tion be­tween an elec­tion pe­ti­tion, an at­tempt to set it aside five years lat­er and a vote that hap­pens to be on the same al­le­ga­tion of bias. One would have to be fool­ish not to see the ob­vi­ous con­nec­tion be­tween the two.”

He al­so re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that Row­ley’s de­ci­sion was tak­en af­ter get­ting in­de­pen­dent ad­vice.

“The Prime Min­is­ter re­ceived the Law As­so­ci­a­tion rec­om­men­da­tion and re­port. He then hired a very rep­utable Queens Coun­sel, Howard Stevens is his name and Mr Stevens was in­volved in the CJ Shar­ma Sec­tion 137 and he ad­vised PM that there was no step to be tak­en as we had not crossed the thresh­old to en­ter in­to a Sec­tion 137 ap­pli­ca­tion. The PM then made that ad­vice pub­lic.”

But now that the mat­ter will be head­ing to court, Al-Rawi said he was look­ing on with in­ter­est.

“The Law As­so­ci­a­tion does not seem to have a very strong case on the sub­stan­tia­tive ap­pli­ca­tion. They can cross the low bar but not the sec­ond thresh­old. It will be very in­ter­est­ing to see how that goes.”

Asked whether the Law As­so­ci­a­tion was act­ing in bad faith, Al-Rawi re­spond­ed, “No, one can­not as­cribe bad faith to a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic vote even though the turnout to vote was pal­try.”

He said, how­ev­er, that it ap­pears not all lawyers were in favour of the mo­tion for ju­di­cial re­view.

“At the end of the day the tax­pay­ers will foot the bill and it will be mil­lions of dol­lars.”