Op­po­si­tion ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj has re­spond­ed to the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and cur­rent Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi’s crit­i­cisms of claims that the PNM Gov­ern­ment spent close to $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees in its sev­en years in of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj, who spent six months ob­tain­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion on min­is­te­r­i­al and State en­ter­pris­es’ le­gal spend­ing via a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act Re­quest Project, the fig­ures and Al-Rawi’s me­dia re­lease ex­posed what he called Al-Rawi’s hypocrisy and bias.

“This is a case of do so eh like so. When Al-Rawi re­peat­ed­ly ac­cused the Part­ner­ship of spend­ing over $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees, he nev­er clar­i­fied that this was the gov­ern­ment’s to­tal bill in­clu­sive of le­gal fees paid by State en­ter­pris­es. He sly­ly gave the false im­pres­sion that for­mer AG Anand Ram­lo­gan ex­pend­ed that sum and com­pared it to the lim­it­ed le­gal fees spent by him as AG. The re­al­i­ty is that State en­ter­pris­es are run by in­de­pen­dent Boards of Di­rec­tors and hence no AG is re­spon­si­ble for such ex­pen­di­ture. The ar­ti­cle dealt with the gov­ern­ment’s to­tal le­gal bill to ex­pose Al-Rawi’s con­stant com­par­ing of ap­ples with grapes,” Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj said in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day in re­sponse to Al-Rawi’s claims in the Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle on the is­sue.

“Al-Rawi is play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness. As he well knows, any new gov­ern­ment would in­her­it on­go­ing le­gal mat­ters that are be­fore the court and in­voic­es for ser­vices ren­dered un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. In­deed, the PP had al­so com­plained about the large sums of mon­ey it had to pay for in­voic­es that the PNM had not paid. In an ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled AG: Ten PNM ‘friends’ got $84m in le­gal fees pub­lished in the Trinidad Guardian dat­ed 22 Sep­tem­ber 2010, (Anand) Ram­lo­gan had made a sim­i­lar com­plaint,” Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj said of Al-Rawi’s claim that the re­port failed to men­tion costs in­her­it­ed from le­gal mat­ters in­volv­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

The UNC ac­tivist lam­bast­ed Al-Rawi’s claims that the ma­te­r­i­al the Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle used to re­port on the Gov­ern­ment’s le­gal spend­ing pos­si­bly lacked ac­cu­ra­cy.

“I con­firm that the in­for­ma­tion is ac­cu­rate be­cause it was sourced di­rect­ly from gov­ern­ment min­istries. I would be hap­py to pro­vide Al-Rawi with a copy of the re­spons­es I re­ceived from each min­istry, which would have no doubt been vet­ted and ap­proved by the Min­is­ter in charge,” he said.

“I have no idea why Al-Rawi would think that his own min­is­te­r­i­al col­leagues would pro­vide in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion in re­sponse to of­fi­cial FOIA re­quests. His red her­ring about the sources of the in­for­ma­tion hav­ing an “ap­par­ent con­flict of in­ter­est” be­cause of Mr Ram­lo­gan’s crim­i­nal case is a ridicu­lous at­tempt to cast doubt on the ac­cu­ra­cy of the fig­ures pro­vid­ed by his own Gov­ern­ment.”

Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj al­so crit­i­cised Al-Rawi’s sug­ges­tion that the Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle failed to sep­a­rate le­gal costs and non-le­gal costs from the over­all ex­pen­di­ture tal­ly.

He de­fend­ed his FOIA ap­pli­ca­tions, say­ing they sought spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion about le­gal fees paid to at­tor­neys and it was ex­act­ly what was pro­vid­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

He laughed off sug­ges­tions by the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that he, as AG at the time, did not ex­er­cise con­trol over the spend­ing of the in­de­pen­dent Of­fice of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, which, ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, ac­count­ed for 17 per cent of re­port­ed le­gal spend­ing.

“The AG is the line Min­is­ter for the DPP and has al­ways paid le­gal fees req­ui­si­tioned by the Of­fice of the DPP. The po­si­tion was the same un­der the PP as it is un­der the PNM. Al-Rawi’s po­lit­i­cal mis­chief is easy to ex­pose, as one need on­ly ask whether he sim­i­lar­ly high­light­ed and ex­cised the le­gal fees at­trib­ut­able to the DPP when he pre­sent­ed the le­gal fees spent by the PP un­der Ram­lo­gan?” Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj said.

Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj al­so con­demned Al-Rawi for com­plain­ing about not be­ing en­gaged for com­ment con­cern­ing the ma­te­r­i­al can­vassed by the ar­ti­cle.

“The ar­ti­cle states that every at­tempt was made to get a com­ment from AG Regi­nald Ar­mour. No re­sponse was forth­com­ing. Per­haps Al-Rawi has for­got­ten that he is now the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. Giv­en the ter­ri­ble weath­er we have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, Al Rawi’s time would be bet­ter spent on drainage and flood­ing is­sues and leave the new AG to do his job,” he said.

“I would be hap­py to have a pub­lic de­bate with Al-Rawi on this mat­ter at any time to avoid the con­fu­sion and mis­chief his bi­ased press re­lease can cause.”

A Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle pub­lished this past Sun­day claimed that the Gov­ern­ment has spent close to $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees since en­ter­ing of­fice in 2015.

The sto­ry was based on doc­u­ments ob­tained by Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj and his le­gal team - in­clud­ing for­mer AG Anand Ram­lo­gan - through FOIA re­quests made over six months.

On Sun­day af­ter­noon, Al-Rawi is­sued a press re­lease deny­ing and crit­i­cis­ing some of the claims made in the ar­ti­cle.