Gail Alexan­der

Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel (CPC) Ian Mac­In­tyre’s le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anand Ram­lo­gan has called on new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour to with­draw the March 16 let­ter in which his pre­de­ces­sor Faris Al-Rawi sought dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against Mac­In­tyre, the day Al-Rawi was re­moved as AG.

This is stat­ed in a let­ter sent to Ar­mour on March 18 by Jared Ja­groo of Ram­lo­gan’s Free­dom Cham­bers—two days af­ter Ar­mour was an­nounced as new AG.

Ar­mour was asked to re­view and re­con­sid­er the mat­ter with­in 28 days.

Ram­lo­gan’s cham­bers cit­ed a 20-point ar­gu­ment against Al-Rawi’s ac­tions.

The let­ter added that since Al-Rawi’s com­plaint against Mac­In­tyre to the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) was dat­ed March 16, 2022, “se­ri­ous doubt” arose whether Al-Rawi was “com­pe­tent” to make the com­plaint as AG since he was re­lieved of the port­fo­lio that day.

“Al-Rawi was no longer hold­ing the of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al when this com­plaint was sub­mit­ted to the JLSC. As such, it is il­le­gal, null and void and of no le­gal ef­fect.”

Ar­mour didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s query on the call.

The is­sue is among oth­ers Ar­mour has been faced with af­ter the March 16 Cab­i­net reshuf­fle when he was ap­point­ed to re­place Al-Rawi as AG.

Al-Rawi wrote JLSC chair­man Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie on March 16 fol­low­ing a string of cor­re­spon­dence be­tween him and Mac­In­tyre over Feb­ru­ary to March. The let­ter con­cerned Mac­In­tyre’s al­leged fail­ure to com­ply with Al-Rawi’s in­struc­tions as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Al-Rawi re­quest­ed a probe in­to his com­plaint that Mac­In­tyre com­mit­ted al­leged dis­ci­pli­nary of­fences of “in­sub­or­di­na­tion, breach of his du­ty to co­op­er­ate and breach of his du­ty to main­tain trust and con­fi­dence.”

Al­so re­quest­ed was con­sid­er­a­tion of sus­pen­sion of Mac­In­tyre pend­ing probe.

Al-Rawi’s let­ter was copied to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion Corey Har­ri­son, deputy CPC Ida Everse­ly and oth­ers.

Cor­re­spon­dence shows an im­passe de­vel­oped be­tween for­mer AG Al-Rawi and CPC Mac­In­tyre—the state’s main le­gal drafts­man_ since Sep­tem­ber 2020, con­tin­u­ing to Feb­ru­ary 2021.

This in­volved dis­agree­ment on the draft­ing of bills.

Al-Rawi’s let­ter cit­ed Mac­In­tyre’s re­fusal to ac­cept any in­struc­tions from him which were not sup­port­ed by a Cab­i­net Minute and Mac­In­tyre’s in­struc­tions to his de­part­ment to do the same.

Al-Rawi said Mac­In­tyre “uni­lat­er­al­ly de­vel­oped guide­lines which he’s por­trayed as pol­i­cy and which led to his re­fusal to ac­cept in­struc­tions.”

But the let­ter from Ram­lo­gan’s cham­bers stat­ed Mac­In­tyre had con­cerns about Al-Rawi’s con­duct and modus operan­di be­cause “he was in breach of well-es­tab­lished West­min­ster sys­tem pro­to­cols and con­ven­tions” where gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy is de­ter­mined by Cab­i­net or the Prime Min­is­ter—not the AG.

The sit­u­a­tion came to a head ear­ly this month with both men writ­ing high­er au­thor­i­ties re­cent­ly.

Anand Ramlogan

Al-Rawi gave Mac­In­tyre in­struc­tions at the end of Feb­ru­ary con­cern­ing po­ten­tial amend­ment to the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Act. These in­volved spe­cial re­quests from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions—but he didn’t get a re­sponse and wrote Mac­In­tyre on March 11.

Mac­In­tyre, how­ev­er, wrote DPA Har­ri­son on March 14 that he was con­strained to re­port the im­passe to the JLSC be­cause Al-Rawi strong­ly dis­agreed with his di­vi­sion’s po­si­tion and had threat­ened to ini­ti­ate dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against him for his re­fusal to draft leg­is­la­tion with­out Cab­i­net-ap­proved pol­i­cy in­struc­tions con­cern­ing a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty mat­ter.

Mac­In­tyre felt even if Al-Rawi want­ed to “take over” Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s role/re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­vel­op pol­i­cy he should ob­tain Cab­i­net’s ap­proval of pol­i­cy be­fore de­mand­ing leg­is­la­tion be draft­ed.

He said the Leg­isla­tive Draft­ing De­part­ment’s role is to draft leg­is­la­tion on the ba­sis of Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, not de­vel­op pol­i­cy in the form of a Bill and the de­part­ment’s “bur­den” would be un­bear­able if the AG’s Min­istry alone draft­ed leg­is­la­tion for all Min­istries/agen­cies with­out their pol­i­cy in­struc­tions and Cab­i­net’s ap­proval.

Mac­In­tyre’s let­ter stat­ed the is­sue was “whether” the CPC and oth­er Leg­isla­tive Draft­ing De­part­ment of­fi­cers are en­ti­tled to re­quire Cab­i­net-ap­proved pol­i­cy in­struc­tions as the prop­er au­thor­i­ty for the draft­ing of leg­is­la­tion or “whether the CPC is oblig­ed to draft, or to di­rect of­fi­cers to draft, leg­is­la­tion on the ba­sis of oral/oth­er in­struc­tions is­sued by the AG.

He sought au­di­ence with the JLSC if Al-Rawi com­plained to the JLSC and be­fore any de­ci­sion on sus­pen­sion/dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion. If Al-Rawi didn’t com­plain Mac­In­tyre sought JLSC in­quiry of the mat­ter.

His let­ter was copied to Row­ley, JLSC chair­man Archie, Al-Rawi and oth­ers.

Two days lat­er on March 16, the reshuf­fle date, Al-Rawi sought dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against McIn­tyre, giv­ing the JLSC de­tailed overview of the im­passe in an eight-page let­ter.

He said Mac­In­tyre demon­strat­ed “dere­lic­tion of du­ty” in car­ry­ing out in­struc­tions for the draft­ing of crit­i­cal amend­ment bills in­clud­ing the An­ti-Gang Act, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act, the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Amend­ment) Act, Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act, and re­cent­ly, “crit­i­cal pro­posed amend­ments to the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (IOC) bill.”

Deputy CPC Ida Ever­s­ley (who ran the de­part­ment when Mac­In­tyre was on va­ca­tion in 2021) al­so ex­pressed deep con­cern to Mac­In­tyre on his (Mac­In­tyre’s) po­si­tion in a March 11, 2022 let­ter.

Al-Rawi, cit­ing the fi­nal is­sue, said, “The events giv­ing rise to my com­plaint cul­mi­nat­ed in a let­ter which I wrote (Mac­In­tyre) on 11th March 2022 di­rect­ing him to in­di­cate by 4:00 pm on March 14, 2022 that he would ac­cept this in­struc­tion with­out an ac­com­pa­ny­ing Cab­i­net or Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al ap­proval and to con­firm he’d with­drawn con­trary in­struc­tions from his staff, fail­ing which I would make a com­plaint to the Com­mis­sion.”

Al-Rawi re­ceived no re­sponse from Mac­In­tyre who in­stead wrote the DPA for the JLSC’s at­ten­tion on the is­sue—but with­out stat­ing Al-Rawi’s March 11 let­ter.

Al-Rawi added, “Giv­en the CPC’s re­fusal to re­spond to my March 11th 2022 let­ter, the CPC’s sub­se­quent cor­re­spon­dence to the DPA and con­tin­ued re­fusal to ad­here to my law­ful in­struc­tions, to fa­cil­i­tate my le­git­i­mate re­quests and to ad­here to ex­pec­ta­tions rea­son­ably ex­pect­ed of his of­fice, I’m con­strained to re­fer this mat­ter for in­ves­ti­ga­tion as it can no longer be tol­er­at­ed.”

Faris Al-Rawi

Image courtesy Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago

Al-Rawi, not­ing Mac­In­tyre’s March 14 let­ter to the JLSC chal­lenged all points.

He added, “My every at­tempt at a res­o­lu­tion of this mat­ter and to have the CPC’s De­part­ment re­sume the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive draft­ing work it is en­trust­ed to do has failed and the de­part­ment has ef­fec­tive­ly ground to a halt.”

PM mum on if this caused reshuf­fle

In the ten­sions from 2020, sources con­firmed Gov­ern­ment’s lead­er­ship and the PM were kept ful­ly ap­prised of the dif­fi­cul­ty with Mac­In­tyre. Cab­i­net was al­so in­formed of ad­vice from se­nior coun­sel at the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to re­fer Mac­In­tyre to the JLSC and to seek his sus­pen­sion pend­ing probe.

In last Wednes­day’s Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, Row­ley didn’t say why the changes were made. He didn’t re­ply yes­ter­day to queries on whether the is­sue with Mac­In­tyre caused Al-Rawi’s re­moval.

Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to speak to­mor­row in San Fer­nan­do and shed light on the reshuf­fle.

Al-Rawi, who is the PNM’s San Fer­nan­do West MP, will be along­side his boss.

The let­ter from Ram­lo­gan’s cham­bers to the new AG re­quest­ed that Ar­mour re­view the mat­ter to de­ter­mine whether Al-Rawi’s com­plaint against Mac­In­tyre was prop­er­ly made “and if so, whether it is one that you wish to adopt and pur­sue as the new­ly ap­point­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.”

“Mr Al-Rawi’s de­ci­sion is amenable to ju­di­cial re­view on the ground that it is not au­tho­rised by law, ir­ra­tional, il­le­gal, in ex­cess of ju­ris­dic­tion and fun­da­men­tal­ly un­fair.”

“It is iron­ic that on the very day Mr Al-Rawi was try­ing to get Mr Mac­In­tyre sus­pend­ed he was in fact re­moved by the Prime Min­is­ter as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. It may well be that this was po­et­ic jus­tice, giv­en Mr Al-Rawi’s vul­gar and ob­scene at­tempt to hound our client out of of­fice. In the cir­cum­stances, we call up­on you to with­draw this let­ter of com­plaint.”

CPC dis­agreed with Al-Rawi on THA tie-break­er bill

In­clud­ed in the let­ter to Ar­mour was that Mac­In­tyre record­ed “strong ob­jec­tion to Al-Rawi’s “at­tempt to in­tim­i­date and bul­ly him in­to draft­ing a Bill to re­solve the tie in the THA elec­tions.”

It was al­leged that no one from the AG’s Sec­re­tari­at would be prepar­ing a note for the Prime Min­is­ter but the Leg­isla­tive Draft­ing De­part­ment’s po­si­tion was that it would not draft leg­is­la­tion with­out Cab­i­net-ap­proved pol­i­cy in­struc­tions “for the sev­er­al rea­sons”.

The let­ter not­ed Mac­In­tyre had stat­ed, “While the res­o­lu­tion of the tie in the re­cent THA Elec­tions is of crit­i­cal im­por­tance, trans­paren­cy and good gov­er­nance is equal­ly, if not more, im­por­tant. It is clear that it will be months be­fore the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion can es­tab­lish the new bound­aries and fresh elec­tions can be held. In the in­ter­im, the ex­ist­ing THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil re­mains in place. The req­ui­site leg­is­la­tion is, there­fore, not so ur­gent or com­pli­cat­ed that a suf­fi­cient­ly com­pe­tent mem­ber of your Sec­re­tari­at can­not pre­pare the req­ui­site Note for the Prime Min­is­ter/Note for Cab­i­net in short or­der fol­low­ing our pro­posed meet­ing with mem­bers of Sec­re­tari­at on Mon­day or up­on the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions.”

“The Leg­isla­tive Draft­ing De­part­ment will not, there­fore, give way to un­due po­lit­i­cal pres­sure to draft leg­is­la­tion on this cru­cial mat­ter with­out the ap­proval of pol­i­cy in­struc­tion by the Prime Min­is­ter/ Cab­i­net Please, there­fore, be as­sured that the Bill will be draft­ed im­me­di­ate­ly up­on re­ceipt of the pol­i­cy as ap­proved by the Prime Min­is­ter/ Cab­i­net.”

The let­ter added Mac­In­tyre had to re­spond to an email from the of­fice of the Clerk of the House which crit­i­cised a Bill. Mac­In­tyre, re­ply­ing, said the Bills were pre­pared and sent to Par­lia­ment with­out his in­volve­ment.

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