The mat­ter in­volv­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has now tak­en on po­lit­i­cal over­tones and one hopes this se­ri­ous mat­ter will not evolve fur­ther in­to a po­lit­i­cal cir­cus. On Mon­day, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, hold­ing on in the ab­sence of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, eas­i­ly dis­missed Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in the Par­lia­ment over his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port civ­il mat­ter in the Unit­ed States.

Fur­ther­more, not even a vote of no-con­fi­dence against him and an Op­po­si­tion walk­out when he was set to speak, prompt­ed AG Ar­mour to break his si­lence on the al­le­ga­tion he told an un­truth in a sworn af­fi­davit in the Mi­a­mi court.

The Op­po­si­tion has cit­ed what it claims is clear ev­i­dence of Mr Ar­mour’s un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour in its ar­gu­ment of his un­suit­abil­i­ty to hold of­fice any fur­ther. But the truth is that the pub­lic is no wis­er on the mat­ter save what has been re­port­ed in the me­dia, since the AG him­self has giv­en very lit­tle de­tails than, us­ing the cloak of an ap­peal of the mat­ter as his de­fence.

Yes­ter­day, Mr Ar­mour left the coun­try on ‘of­fi­cial busi­ness’ un­til June 16 but there was no in­di­ca­tion what the busi­ness was.

While Mr Ar­mour re­mains mum on al­le­ga­tions he per­jured him­self in a for­eign court, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion he once head­ed yes­ter­day sought more in­for­ma­tion on the US court pro­ceed­ings as lo­cal at­tor­neys raised more ques­tions on the is­sue dur­ing a month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing, even as some of them were re­port­ed­ly con­tem­plat­ing a pe­ti­tion call­ing for a vote of no-con­fi­dence in the AG.

The re­al­i­ty is that the al­le­ga­tions, vote of no-con­fi­dence in both Hous­es by the Op­po­si­tion and rum­blings with­in the Law As­so­ci­a­tion have done enough harm to the Of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, whether Mr Ar­mour is will­ing to ad­mit it or not.

In Flori­da, the of­fence of per­jury in an of­fi­cial pro­ceed­ing is a third-de­gree felony pun­ish­able by up to five years in prison.

It means that if, in fact, the AG did per­jure him­self as is be­ing al­leged, the mat­ter could go in­to a dif­fer­ent realm if the US court takes it fur­ther.

While one can un­der­stand that the Prime Min­is­ter and AG may have to meet, talk and seek le­gal ad­vice on the is­sue, then there is some­thing to be con­cerned about and si­lence should not be an op­tion.

To say the un­fold­ing sce­nario is un­ac­cept­able is putting it mild­ly. We make no judge­ment on this but in the in­ter­est of the coun­try and the oath the AG took to up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion and the law with­out fear or favour, it is im­per­a­tive the coun­try gets the facts about this mat­ter.

To be clear the is­sue is not Mr Ar­mour’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion by the Mi­a­mi court be­cause he was part of a le­gal team who rep­re­sent­ed two de­fen­dants in the Pi­ar­co Air­port crim­i­nal mat­ter years ago, but rather whether as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, he spoke an un­truth in an af­fi­davit.

It is this al­le­ga­tion which con­cerns cit­i­zens and if, in fact, it is true, whether Mr Ar­mour will still have the moral au­thor­i­ty to con­tin­ue to serve as the tit­u­lar head of the bar in Trinidad and To­ba­go will come to the fore. It is, how­ev­er, time to stop the cir­cus and en­sure the peo­ple of this coun­try get the an­swers.