KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed wants to know why he was snubbed for the po­si­tion of se­nior coun­sel for a sec­ond time.

On Mon­day, an of­fi­cial list of 16 se­nior coun­sels were an­nounced and 13 were award­ed “silk” in a cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House but Mo­hammed was not among them.

At­tor­neys award­ed “silk” this year in­clude Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, Chief Pub­lic De­fend­er Ha­sine Shaikh, WASA chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga, for­mer Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) min­is­ter An­tho­ny Smart, for­mer Sen­tenc­ing Com­mis­sion chair­man Gre­go­ry Delzin, Re­gan As­gar­ali, Michael Si­mon de La Bastide, Elaine Greene, Lee Mer­ry, Mark Mor­gan, Win­ston Seenath, Annabelle Sook­lal, Prakash De­onar­ine and Justin Phelps.

Mo­hammed claimed his name was at the top of an orig­i­nal list of se­nior coun­sels from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) and the Ju­di­cia­ry. He claimed that some­where along the way his name was scratched off be­fore it land­ed in the hands of the Pres­i­dent.

He is now call­ing for an­swers and be­lieves At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour should be held ac­count­able.

“My name was the on­ly name re­moved from the list so I want to find out at what stage, my name be­ing on that list that was in the pos­ses­sion of the Ju­di­cia­ry and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, and these are two or­gans of the state which the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would nor­mal­ly con­sult. All I want to find out is at what stage was my name re­moved and for what rea­son.

“When I learnt that there was a list cir­cu­lat­ing, I had fur­ther in­for­ma­tion that Pres­i­dent’s House was told on Sun­day that the list was in­com­plete and there were those who be­lieved that it was my name that would be added to the list,” he said.

“In­stead, af­ter mid­day on Sun­day, it was Kei­th Scot­land’s name that was added. Is it that my name was re­moved and re­placed by Kei­th Scot­land? I don’t know. These are the mat­ters that call for trans­paren­cy and some kind of ex­pla­na­tion.”

He added, “What has caused all of this? The stench that em­anates from the up­per cham­bers where this mat­ter was processed is very dis­com­fort­ing.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is the per­son who is re­spon­si­ble for an­swer­ing these ques­tions. He is the one who is ac­count­able. He is the one who is to re­ceive ap­pli­ca­tions. He is the one who has to go through the process with re­spect to con­sul­ta­tions etcetera. He is the one who will hand it to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Prime Min­is­ter will then pass it on to the Pres­i­dent.

“Iron­i­cal­ly, he is the lawyer who had ad­vised the then-pres­i­dent to fire me as chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) and he is the same one on whom to­day I am call­ing to state whether he in­clud­ed my name and if not, why not? And if he did in­clude my name, by whom was it re­moved?”

Mo­hammed said he reached out to Ar­mour on Sun­day when he re­alised he had not re­ceived a call from the Pres­i­dent’s House in­form­ing him of his ap­point­ment. In his words, the AG “re­fused to re­spond” to him.

Mo­hammed said he ap­plied for “silk” in 2011 but was told by then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to re­sign as PSC head to be con­ferred. He said he re­fused and was lat­er fired.

This time around, he has no idea why he was re­fused.

Of the new­ly-mint­ed se­nior coun­sels, Mo­hammed said no one has more ex­pe­ri­ence prac­tis­ing law or cre­at­ing laws in the coun­try than he does.

“The rea­son why I ap­plied for silk is be­cause I thought it would en­hance my im­age to con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form which is an ex­er­cise that I am ac­tive­ly in­volved in as a mem­ber of the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­view Com­mit­tee. That is the on­ly rea­son I ap­plied for silk,” he said.

“And more than that, there is no one who was award­ed silk that has had a track record in pri­vate prac­tice as long as I have had. I have been in prac­tice for 50 years and 15 years out of those 50 years not on­ly did I prac­tice law in the courts at every lev­el, I was en­gaged in mak­ing the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, not on­ly as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment but pre­sid­ing over the mak­ing of the laws of Par­lia­ment as Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, num­ber five in the pro­to­col list in the or­der of prece­dence in the coun­try, so why have I been de­nied?

“And if I was not de­nied and my name was scratched off some­where as they were pass­ing it around amongst them­selves, where was it scratched off? I think there ought to be trans­paren­cy. We can­not con­tin­ue in this type of slop­py man­ner. It does not do well for our jus­tice sys­tem and it does not do well for na­tion-build­ing.”

Asked if he will ever ap­ply for “silk” again, Mo­hammed said, “Nev­er again. I will not hu­mil­i­ate my­self, but I was not do­ing it for my­self, I was do­ing it for my coun­try.”