PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will not legal­ly chal­lenge the le­git­i­ma­cy of Bar­ry Padarath’s can­di­da­cy in Princes Town.

PNM Po­lit­i­cal Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed that the par­ty opt­ed not to fol­low through on a le­gal chal­lenge on the mat­ter at a news con­fer­ence at Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day.

“I as leader of the PNM have guid­ed my par­ty to a po­si­tion that we will not en­gage in this ex­er­cise be­cause it is not free, it is not cheap and it is not with­out risk,” he said.

He ex­plained, that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) elec­tion pe­ti­tion, staged in the wake of the 2015 elec­tion, helped in­form his de­ci­sion.

The UNC mem­bers had filed the pe­ti­tions af­ter the PNM won that elec­tion by a 23-18 mar­gin.

Pe­ti­tions were ini­tial­ly filed for six con­stituen­cies—La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, To­co/San­gre Grande, Tu­na­puna, St Joseph, San Fer­nan­do West, and Moru­ga/Table­land but the pe­ti­tion for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro was dis­missed be­fore the tri­al as it was served on the suc­cess­ful PNM can­di­date, Maxi Cuffie, af­ter the re­quired dead­line.

The pe­ti­tion, which had been struck down in the High Court in 2016, was al­so struck out in the Ap­peal Court in Feb­ru­ary this year.

“That mat­ter was dis­missed in Feb­ru­ary 2020, so now that po­lit­i­cal par­ty has costs be­cause the mat­ter was dis­missed with costs,” he said.

“You may be in­ter­est­ed to know that the PNM’s state­ment of costs for that four and a half years of lit­i­ga­tion is $23 mil­lion and the EBC costs is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $14 mil­lion. These claims are to be ad­ju­di­cat­ed up­on in the com­ing months for a fi­nal po­si­tion to be de­ter­mined by the courts, these are the claims and ap­prox­i­mate claims for those ex­cur­sions.”

How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley said the PNM had tak­en the nec­es­sary steps to pur­sue the case pri­or to this con­sid­er­a­tion, even con­sult­ing with some of the re­gion’s top at­tor­neys on the mat­ter.

He re­vealed that the door was still open for any oth­er body to pur­sue the case.

“That chal­lenge is open to the PNM and any per­son or agency, but the PNM was pur­su­ing the PNM’s in­ter­est in this mat­ter and drew it to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ties and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

“I can tell you, that the ad­vice I have got in writ­ing from these le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies have all con­firmed that the nom­i­na­tion as pre­pared for the mem­ber of Par­lia­ment the UNC can­di­date in Princes Town, does not meet the re­quire­ments of the law and is whol­ly in­valid. That is the opin­ion of the PNM,” he added.

He ex­plained that should a less ex­haus­tive method of pur­su­ing the mat­ter present it­self, the case may be re­vis­it­ed.

“The ques­tion is now to be de­ter­mined and I will ask the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to ad­vise the coun­try and to ques­tion the EBC as to whether this is not a mat­ter for a de­ter­mi­na­tion by the court with­out the kind of ex­po­sure that I am steer­ing the PNM away from,” said Dr Row­ley.