At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour says noth­ing in the Privy Coun­cil's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions rul­ing yes­ter­day sug­gest­ed the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to dis­en­fran­chise the cit­i­zens to vote, or that the Gov­ern­ment breached the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Ar­mour was re­spond­ing to the rul­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fice.

"I em­pha­sise here to­day that the amend­ments to the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion Act have been de­signed to im­prove the leg­isla­tive en­abling frame­work with­in which lo­cal gov­ern­ment will be im­ple­ment­ed for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go by their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, so as to man­age their com­mu­ni­ties," Ar­mour said.

"It bears em­pha­sis that noth­ing in the way of those amend­ments, and noth­ing in the de­ci­sion of the Privy Coun­cil, can sup­port any ar­gu­ment that this Gov­ern­ment, by these amend­ments, was seek­ing to dis­en­fran­chise the rights of cit­i­zens of this coun­try to vote their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives in­to of­fice."

The AG could not say, how­ev­er, if the rul­ing means Gov­ern­ment will be forced to call the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions im­me­di­ate­ly.

"A de­ci­sion ul­ti­mate on when an elec­tion is to be called will be for the Prime Min­is­ter," he said.

He ar­gued that in ef­fect, the Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in­ter­pret­ed one as­pect of a de­ci­sion tak­en by Par­lia­ment in Ju­ly last year to ex­tend the term of the elec­tions.

"The Privy Coun­cil, in agree­ment with a unan­i­mous Court of Ap­peal, found at para­graph 20 that “a change in the length of in­cum­bent coun­cil­lors’ terms of of­fice can­not amount to a con­tra­ven­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion."

"The term for which rep­re­sen­ta­tives have been elect­ed is im­por­tant but an in­crease by one year in the term of in­cum­bent coun­cil­lors and al­der­men does not of it­self breach any pro­vi­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” he said.

He added, "More than this, the ma­jor­i­ty of the Privy Coun­cil ex­press­ly recog­nised that it was the pre­rog­a­tive of and 'with­in the leg­isla­tive com­pe­tence of Par­lia­ment' to so ex­tend the term of in­cum­bent coun­cil­lors pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient­ly clear lan­guage was used.

"The on­ly point of dif­fer­ence be­tween the ma­jor­i­ty rul­ing and that of the oth­er judges is to the clar­i­ty of the lan­guage used in achiev­ing the ac­cept­ed and per­mis­si­ble ob­jec­tive of ex­tend­ing the date for the elec­tions."

He said the Gov­ern­ment has ac­cept­ed the Privy Coun­cil's rul­ing but main­tained it would be in­cor­rect to state Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted a con­sti­tu­tion­al breach.

"I em­pha­sise this, be­cause this de­ci­sion is, of course, one with an un­doubt­ed po­lit­i­cal di­men­sion. And there will be those who will seek to mis­rep­re­sent the de­ci­sion that was hand­ed down to­day in or­der to make po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal out of that de­ci­sion.

"I sug­gest, with re­spect, and I cau­tion that any mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this judg­ment will be wrong­ly a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion that can bor­der on con­tempt. So I urge all cit­i­zens to take the time to read this judg­ment," he said.

He con­tin­ued: "In light of these ex­press find­ings, that the pur­pose of de­lay­ing elec­tions was not un­law­ful nor in breach of any con­sti­tu­tion­al or com­mon law rights and, re­spect­ing the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the amend­ments as the Privy Coun­cil has now ruled, as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I have this Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion un­der ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion for the ad­vice which I will be giv­ing to the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net, in con­sul­ta­tion with very learned and ac­com­plished Se­nior Coun­sel of the Trinidad and To­ba­go bar."

The AG said it would be pre­ma­ture to say what the next step would be with­out fur­ther di­a­logue with the se­nior coun­sel from whom he is tak­ing ad­vice and said he would say more in due course.