Derek Achong

Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj will have to take his le­gal chal­lenge, over the Gov­ern­ment’s move to ex­tend the term of lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives by a year, to the Privy Coun­cil.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Ap­pel­late Judges Prakash Moo­sai, Gillian Lucky and James Aboud dis­missed Ma­haraj’s ap­peal against the Cab­i­net and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi.

Ma­haraj’s lawyer, Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, in­di­cat­ed that State at­tor­neys had agreed that the case should be con­sid­ered by the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court even be­fore the ap­peal pan­el weighed in on the case yes­ter­day.

“The case is of sig­nif­i­cant im­por­tance and should go to the Privy Coun­cil,” Ram­lo­gan said, as he not­ed the case would have to be dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

Ma­haraj’s law­suit cen­tred around the ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty of Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form) Act, which was passed by Par­lia­ment with­out the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion last year.

In his law­suit, Ma­haraj claimed he be­came con­cerned af­ter Al-Rawi host­ed a press con­fer­ence and an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to pro­claim cer­tain sec­tions of the leg­is­la­tion.

The sec­tions of the leg­is­la­tion iden­ti­fied by Al-Rawi seek to in­crease the terms of coun­cil­lors from three years to four years. It ef­fec­tive­ly caused the de­fer­ral of the elec­tion, which would have been due be­tween De­cem­ber last year and March this year, had the amend­ment not been pro­claimed.

Ma­haraj con­tend­ed that Al-Rawi mis­in­ter­pret­ed the ef­fect of the leg­is­la­tion when he an­nounced plans to ap­ply it to in­cum­bent coun­cil­lors and al­der­men as he claims that it did not have a retroac­tive ef­fect.

Jus­tice Moo­sai, who de­liv­ered the pan­el’s unan­i­mous judg­ment, said the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to vote on­ly ap­plied to gen­er­al elec­tions and not lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, as con­tend­ed by Ma­haraj’s le­gal team.

He al­so said cit­i­zens did not have the right to vote in lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions with­in three months of the term of elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives end­ing, as such was gov­erned by the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act, which was amend­ed by the leg­is­la­tion un­der chal­lenge in the case.

While he agreed with his col­leagues’ analy­sis of the case, Jus­tice Aboud sought to give his views over the abil­i­ty of the Cab­i­net to pro­claim and op­er­a­tionalise por­tions of the leg­is­la­tion.

Jus­tice Aboud point­ed out that when the leg­is­la­tion was passed by Par­lia­ment, it did not in­clude a pro­vi­sion pre­clud­ing par­tial procla­ma­tion.

“While Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj might be un­hap­py with this, the fact is the will of Par­lia­ment is supreme,” Jus­tice Aboud said.

“We must re­spect the will of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans,” he added.

When Ma­haraj filed the case last year, he sought an in­junc­tion block­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives from act­ing in of­fice af­ter their orig­i­nal term came to an end in ear­ly De­cem­ber last year. He filed the ap­peal af­ter High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son re­ject­ed his in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion in late No­vem­ber.

While Ma­haraj was ini­tial­ly on­ly chal­leng­ing Jus­tice Wil­son’s de­ci­sion in re­la­tion to the in­ter­im re­lief he sought, his lawyers and those for the State agreed that the Ap­peal Court should con­sid­er the sub­stan­tive is­sues raised by him si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

In a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said he was not sur­prised by the out­come. He ex­pressed con­fi­dence, how­ev­er, that he would even­tu­al­ly emerge vic­to­ri­ous af­ter the fi­nal ap­peal in the case.

“We have al­ready be­gun the process of fil­ing an ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil and I am hope­ful that we can bet­ter be able to con­vince the Law Lords that the ex­ten­sion of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion is il­le­gal and that we must have an elec­tion when it is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due,” Ma­haraj said.

“To have per­sons re­main­ing in elect­ed of­fices past the ex­piry date of their term is a breach of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date that gov­erns our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, and it can­not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue if we claim to live in a democ­ra­cy,” he added.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day evening, Al-Rawi said he was “heart­ened” by the out­come but de­clined to com­ment fur­ther un­til the court is­sued its writ­ten de­ci­sion.

Ma­haraj was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, Natasha Bis­ram, and Vishaal Siewsaran. Dou­glas Mendes, SC, and Rishi Dass rep­re­sent­ed the Cab­i­net and Al-Rawi.