Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi says it’s “fake news” to sug­gest a court chal­lenge over the dis­missal of CEPEP con­trac­tors has col­lapsed, in­sist­ing the case was sim­ply with­drawn so it could be re­filed cor­rect­ly.

The High Court claim, brought by Stephen Samuel’s Con­trac­tors Ltd, was filed on Ju­ly 3 and with­drawn with­in 24 hours. The Gov­ern­ment ac­cused the con­trac­tor of abus­ing the le­gal process and pur­su­ing a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed case. But Al-Rawi said the re­al is­sue was a tech­ni­cal­i­ty.

“It turns out that many com­pa­nies work­ing in CEPEP were, in fact, the vic­tims of an ex­er­cise to delist and dereg­is­ter com­pa­nies at the com­pa­nies reg­istry,” he told PNM sup­port­ers over the week­end. “And it turns out that the claimant in one of the con­trac­tors step­ping for­ward to rep­re­sent one of the claims found him­self, with­out his knowl­edge, in that sit­u­a­tion. Easy fix, you with­draw, you bring a new one, be­cause they have 336 con­trac­tors. Very sim­ple fix.”

Sup­port­ing him, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, who was al­so speak­ing at the PNM’s Ch­agua­nas of­fice on Sat­ur­day night, said, “There was no mis­step. Some­thing hap­pened when we filed and we strate­gi­cal­ly de­cid­ed that we would go and come again so that there would not be any le­gal chal­lenges whether tech­ni­cal or oth­er­wise that would stymie our case.”

Scot­land crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s claim that the case was dis­missed. “The case was nev­er dis­missed! It was with­drawn by us.”

Al-Rawi dis­missed a let­ter from CEPEP’s le­gal team seek­ing costs, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan.

“I see Mis­ter Anand Ram­lo­gan, his cham­bers writ­ing let­ters say­ing they want le­gal fees. Re­al­ly? I thought that dis­cus­sion on le­gal fees end­ed with Mis­ter Nel­son of Se­nior Coun­sel—Queen’s Coun­sel, now King’s Coun­sel. I thought le­gal fees that Anand Ram­lo­gan end­ed with Vin­cent Nel­son. Not so.”

Scot­land asked, “If any Se­nior Coun­sel ever wants fees for this? Where my fees for the elec­tions?” Re­fer­ring to the 2015 elec­tion pe­ti­tion which the UNC lost but re­port­ed­ly nev­er paid le­gal costs to the PNM. 

Both men said the le­gal bat­tle is far from over and the case was just the start of a wider push to chal­lenge the Gov­ern­ment’s fir­ing of thou­sands of con­trac­tors and work­ers.

“Your le­gal teams are very sharply fo­cus­ing on the rights of the work­ers, which are be­ing dealt with in one pot. Sec­ond­ly, on the rights of the con­trac­tors be­ing dealt with in an­oth­er pot. And third­ly, up­on the bad faith that has been ex­er­cised,” Al-Rawi said. 

CEPEP had said the con­trac­tor’s agree­ment was ex­tend­ed just days be­fore the elec­tion, de­spite hav­ing more than 18 months left to run. It ar­gued there was no ten­der process and no pub­lic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. The agency said it was prepar­ing to de­fend the claim in court when it was abrupt­ly with­drawn, with­out warn­ing.

Ram­lo­gan de­scribed the law­suit as “friv­o­lous” and “hope­less,” and said CEPEP is con­sid­er­ing re­port­ing the mat­ter for crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said the agency in­curred sig­nif­i­cant le­gal costs and in­tends to pur­sue them in court.

But Al-Rawi said the big­ger is­sue is not just the court case—it’s the scale of the lay­offs and the lack of Gov­ern­ment re­sponse.

“We know that the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, Khadi­jah Ameen, came for­ward and said that, that min­istry re­quired $60 mil­lion to take the CEPEP work­ers to the end of the fi­nan­cial year,” he said. “We now know that the en­tire work­force has been fired.”

He crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s si­lence on sup­port for work­ers, say­ing it was es­pe­cial­ly dis­turb­ing giv­en the num­ber of for­mer union lead­ers now hold­ing min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice.

“With that $60 mil­lion, we have a gov­ern­ment that has not said to the near 20,000 peo­ple, hold on, folks. Let’s have a dis­cus­sion,” he said. “We have union leader Clyde El­der. We have union leader Ke­sar. We have union leader Bap­tiste in the wings. We have An­cel Ro­get. We have all our union col­leagues… not one of them has come to say, hey boss la­dy, with the great­est of re­spect, let’s meet with the work­ers.”

Scot­land said, “We’re fight­ing for our very ex­is­tence in this coun­try. We’re fight­ing for our jobs. We’re fight­ing to keep food on our ta­bles for our fam­i­ly. We are fight­ing to be able to buy school books come next week for our chil­dren.”