Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has writ­ten to act­ing Pres­i­dent Wade Mark ques­tion­ing what she de­scribed as a “man­i­fest rush” to ap­point a sub­stan­tive Chief Jus­tice while Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo is out of the coun­try.

She urged the act­ing Pres­i­dent to “aban­don any ap­point­ment of a sub­stan­tive Chief Jus­tice at this time” and in­stead re­vert to ap­point­ing an act­ing Chief Jus­tice.

In a let­ter from Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 14, she had been asked to ap­prove Jus­tice Prakash Moo­sai serv­ing as act­ing Chief Jus­tice from No­vem­ber 5-10 dur­ing the Chief Jus­tice’s ab­sence. Beck­les said she gave that non-ob­jec­tion the fol­low­ing day.

Beck­les not­ed that yes­ter­day (Tues­day), the act­ing Pres­i­dent sent her an­oth­er no­tice of the need to ap­point a Chief Jus­tice fol­low­ing Ivor Archie’s an­nounce­ment of his im­me­di­ate re­tire­ment.

She had un­til 1 pm to­day (Wednes­day) to pro­vide a re­sponse.

Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh was sworn in at 2pm.

In her let­ter, Beck­les said the cor­re­spon­dence she re­ceived from the act­ing Pres­i­dent was “ma­te­ri­al­ly de­fi­cient” and failed to pro­vide the nec­es­sary de­tails to al­low for mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion, in­clud­ing a list of judges of the Court of Ap­peal who would take over the po­si­tion, their ré­sumés, se­nior­i­ty, ar­eas of ex­per­tise, and will­ing­ness to serve.

She said she was not giv­en enough time or in­for­ma­tion to “give in­tel­li­gent con­sid­er­a­tion and an in­tel­li­gent re­sponse” in her con­sti­tu­tion­al role as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, adding that ad­e­quate time must be giv­en for such con­sul­ta­tions and that their out­comes must be “con­sci­en­tious­ly tak­en in­to ac­count when the ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion is tak­en.”

She called for the rel­e­vant ma­te­ri­als and suf­fi­cient op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­sul­ta­tion “so that we may to­geth­er en­sure the ben­e­fit and pros­per­i­ty of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”