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Friday, May 30, 2025

Destructive contention among state officials

by

802 days ago
20230319

An un­seem­ly and po­ten­tial­ly de­struc­tive con­tention among state of­fi­cials over is­sues af­fect­ing op­er­a­tions with­in the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions is now threat­en­ing to fur­ther erode the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Why? As ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, who al­so holds the crit­i­cal post of Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, there have been un­at­tend­ed mat­ters af­fect­ing the prop­er func­tion­ing of the DPP’s Of­fice for some time.

In de­fence of re­cent al­le­ga­tions made against him by the Prime Min­is­ter, DPP Roger Gas­pard has com­plained that staff lim­i­ta­tions and the in­ad­e­qua­cy of new of­fice space of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment have stymied the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of his of­fice.

These mat­ters have come to the fore in the wake of the DPP dis­con­tin­u­ing cor­rup­tion cas­es against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Ger­ald Ramdeen.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley in­vest­ed quite an amount of po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal in the case against Mr Ram­lo­gan and Mr Ramdeen. The dis­con­tin­u­ance of the charges against both men has thus de­nied the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ex­plo­sive am­mu­ni­tion against the op­po­si­tion, that is if the two were found guilty.

In an­oth­er in­stance, the DPP gave up on the 20-year-old charge against for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife, a for­mer min­is­ter and a busi­ness­man. It was yet an­oth­er loaded mat­ter which, if de­cid­ed against Mr Pan­day and the oth­ers, would have dealt a se­ri­ous blow to UNC’s chances for the lo­cal and gen­er­al elec­tions to come.

Clear­ly an­noyed by the loss of pro­pa­gan­da pos­si­bil­i­ties, PM Row­ley re­leased vol­leys of con­dem­na­tion against the DPP; and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Amour du­ti­ful­ly fol­lowed through with ac­cu­sa­tions of un­der­per­for­mance of the DPP’s Of­fice which at­tor­neys in the of­fice have railed against.

An­tag­o­nised that al­le­ga­tions from the DPP were aimed at his own func­tion­ing as the head of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, CJ Archie al­so felt it nec­es­sary to de­fend his of­fice. He not­ed that the DPP had not ful­filled his role in mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for ad­di­tion­al staff to the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion, which would then have al­lowed him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to act.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it’s the pub­lic in­ter­ests which have been tram­pled un­der­ground while the ele­phants have fought. Those in­ter­ests cov­er the fail­ure of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to de­liv­er in two crit­i­cal cas­es deal­ing with cor­rup­tion where mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars have been ex­pend­ed fu­tile­ly.

A damming ex­am­ple of how jus­tice is to be pur­sued is high­light­ed by the fact that a Unit­ed States cit­i­zen charged in the same Pi­ar­co Air­port scan­dal has not on­ly been found guilty in that coun­try’s ju­di­cial sys­tem, but has long served his jail sen­tence for his crimes.

At the mo­ment, how­ev­er, the most se­nior of­fi­cials of Gov­ern­ment, the head of the Ju­di­cia­ry and the JLSC, and the DPP, who has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pros­e­cute crim­i­nal mat­ters on be­half of the peo­ple and state, are en­gaged in a cir­cus of blame-game al­lo­ca­tion in the pub­lic are­na while not seem­ing­ly seek­ing to get to­geth­er to re­solve the ul­ti­mate prob­lem.

In the in­ter­im, the fail­ure to pros­e­cute to fi­nal­i­ty two ma­jor cor­rup­tion cas­es in the his­to­ry of this coun­try is an in­dict­ment on the State with the prospect of more such fail­ures to come.


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