SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Coun­sel Avory Sinanan says the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) has backed it­self in a cor­ner with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­fusal to re­con­sid­er his stance on the im­peach­ment of Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

Sinanan said Kokaram’s rul­ing im­posed a Her­culean task on Row­ley to purge him­self of his deep thoughts on what mo­ti­vat­ed the LATT.

“Where he told him to purge his thoughts and re­con­sid­er, he did not give him or pre­scribe the Con­sti­tu­tion­al lax­a­tive for him to do that,” he said

He added that Row­ley was be­ing asked to ex­er­cise su­per­hu­man pow­ers and be some­thing of a Con­sti­tu­tion­al “schiz­o­phrenic, to split him­self in two and go back and look at the mat­ter all over again.”

Sinanan said while Row­ley had in­di­cat­ed to the LATT that he has tak­en Kokaram’s ob­ser­va­tions in­to ac­count “there is no guar­an­tee that he did that. It would be ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for him to do that.”

With the PM re­fus­ing to budge, the LATT “has been paint­ed in­to a cor­ner and it’s dif­fi­cult to ex­tri­cate them­selves,” he said

He said LATT has come close to the end of its teth­er “in terms of ex­haust­ing their re­mit to do what is right and prop­er to bring the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice back on an even keel.” How­ev­er, it has an op­tion to ap­peal.

“The Law As­so­ci­a­tion will have to take that de­ci­sion . . . whether the coun­cil will do that or they would call a full meet­ing of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, which is an­oth­er ques­tion,” he said.

Sinanan said one has to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion mount­ing costs.

“I think the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has made its point. I don’t know how much fur­ther they can go,” he said.

In a let­ter on Fri­day, Row­ley said “af­ter such con­sid­er­a­tion, I have de­cid­ed not to make a rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Pres­i­dent un­der (Sec­tion) 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. I adopt­ed those rea­sons for my said re­con­sid­ered de­ci­sion and do not set them out here.”

Row­ley said he had tak­en in­to ac­count and ob­served the find­ings and state­ment of Jus­tice Vashiest Kokaram in his judg­ment.

“I, there­fore, re­con­sid­er my de­ci­sion on the HDC (Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion) is­sue with an open mind and with­out re­gard to any po­lit­i­cal or oth­er mo­ti­va­tion on the part of the LATT,” Row­ley ssaid.

Kokaram, in a rul­ing last month, or­dered the PM to re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion to re­ject LATT’s call to im­peach Archie. He made the or­der as he par­tial­ly up­held the LATT’s le­gal chal­lenge against Row­ley’s de­ci­sion.

Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan said he was not sur­prised by Row­ley’s de­ci­sion.

“I be­lieve such an im­por­tant mat­ter should be lit­i­gat­ed to the high­est court,” he said.

Khan said Kokaram in­di­cat­ed that it was not un­rea­son­able to trig­ger Sec­tion 137.

He said the al­leged ac­tions of the CJ bor­dered on crim­i­nal of­fences and in not trig­ger­ing Sec­tion 137, “the on­ly op­tion now is for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to di­rect the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to con­duct a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion to see whether he (Archie) com­mit­ted crim­i­nal of­fences.”

A mem­ber of the ju­di­cia­ry, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said: “It’s a de­flec­tion and does not bol­ster pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

The ac­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter have fur­ther en­trenched the per­cep­tion that the Chief jus­tice and the ju­di­cia­ry stand be­hold­en to the gov­ern­ment.

“There is a rapid over­haul of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem which is well-in­tend­ed but these plans are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed with­out the req­ui­site re­sources and of course the Chief Jus­tice in this re­gard isn’t vo­cal and so ex­ist­ing re­sources are stretched so thin­ly that the sys­tem is on the verge of col­lapse.”