DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

The Ch­aguara­mas Mil­i­tary His­to­ry and Aero­space Mu­se­um (CMHAM) may have to find a new home.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day evening, High Court Judge Joan Charles lift­ed an in­junc­tion al­low­ing the mu­se­um to re­main at its lo­ca­tion along the West­ern Main Road in Ch­aguara­mas, which was ob­tained af­ter the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) sought to evict it in late Feb­ru­ary.

Jus­tice Charles agreed with the CDA that as the CMHAM had not paid rent for decades, it was a “ten­ant-at-will” and could be evict­ed via or­di­nary “no­tice to quit” as it was.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Charles or­dered the mu­se­um to pay the CDA’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the in­junc­tion, which would be quan­ti­fied at a lat­er date.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the mu­se­um could re­main at the lo­ca­tion at least un­til a new CDA board is ap­point­ed by the new­ly elect­ed Gov­ern­ment led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and its mem­bers weigh in on the de­ci­sion on the mu­se­um tak­en by their pre­de­ces­sors.

On Oc­to­ber 1 last year, the CDA with­drew its 30-year lease.

The CDA said it made sev­er­al at­tempts to reg­u­larise the mu­se­um as a lessee, but in the last four years, it did not re­ceive a sub­stan­tive re­sponse from the mu­se­um’s pro­pri­etors, who con­tin­ued to op­er­ate on the land with­out pay­ing rent.

On Feb­ru­ary 28, the CDA made good on its evic­tion threats as it took over the fa­cil­i­ty and changed the locks.

Days lat­er, the CDA wrote to the mu­se­um’s board in­struct­ing it to re­move all the arte­facts from the com­pound with­in sev­en days.

High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad then grant­ed a tem­po­rary in­junc­tion restor­ing the mu­se­um’s ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on the in­junc­tion in March, the CDA’s lawyer, Justin Phelps, SC, claimed that the in­junc­tion was sought on a “false premise” as he sug­gest­ed that the CMHAM failed to dis­close facts rel­a­tive to its pro­posed evic­tion.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the mu­se­um’s pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Kathy-Ann Ed­wards, said that the or­gan­i­sa­tion was hope­ful that the new CDA board might take a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion on its con­tin­ued use of the lo­ca­tion.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, the mu­se­um lawyer Glen Bhag­wans­ingh ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

“It is hoped by the mu­se­um that the new ad­min­is­tra­tion would take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach with re­spect to their oc­cu­pa­tion. More par­tic­u­lar­ly, the line min­is­ter, I be­lieve, is Mr Swarats­ingh, who, be­ing a for­mer mil­i­tary man, might un­der­stand the im­por­tance of the mu­se­um,” Bhag­wans­ingh said.