Sat Ma­haraj

In its pur­suit of jus­tice, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha of T&T Inc has spent more than ten years in var­i­ous courts in the land and be­yond.

On De­cem­ber 1, 1999 the Ma­ha Sab­ha sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the Wire­less Teleg­ra­phy Or­di­nance, for per­mis­sion to es­tab­lish a ra­dio sta­tion. On Sep­tem­ber 1, 2000 we sub­mit­ted a sec­ond ap­pli­ca­tion un­der Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (CB­SL). Both ap­pli­ca­tions were de­nied by the then gov­ern­ment but a lat­er ap­pli­ca­tion by Citadel was grant­ed a broad­cast li­cence. Citadel was owned by a known PNM sup­port­er, Mr Louis Lee Sing.

In fact, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions in his re­sponse to our com­plaint and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's re­fer­ral wrote: "Mr Man­ning said that Citadel was a broad­cast­ing op­er­a­tion and were broad­cast­ing but they had an ap­pli­ca­tion for a li­cence in the pipeline.

"Citadel fell out with the peo­ple un­der whose li­cence they were op­er­at­ing. He said that as they were an op­er­at­ing en­ti­ty, he was mind­ed to "take out the li­cence" for Mr Lee Sing and that is what made him do (what he did). He fur­ther stat­ed that "we hap­pen to know Louis Lee Sing, we hap­pen to know them, they are mem­bers of the PNM."

We filed a court ac­tion against the State on Au­gust 16, 2002 and our mat­ter com­menced in the San Fer­nan­do High Court with Jus­tice Best pre­sid­ing. At­tor­ney for the Ma­ha Sab­ha was Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye SC, with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al rep­re­sent­ing the State. In that first and sub­se­quent tri­al, a num­ber of in­con­sis­ten­cies were high­light­ed.

In the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment of Ju­ly 4, 2006 the fol­low­ing is record­ed: "The Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion from De­cem­ber 2001 was Mr Hed­widge Bereaux. In a me­dia con­fer­ence on Au­gust 1, 2002 Mr Bereaux stat­ed that Citadel had ap­plied for its li­cence on March 13, 2001. A search of the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry showed the ap­pel­lants Citadel was on­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed on Au­gust 28, 2001."

That same judg­ment of Ju­ly 4, 2006, the Law Lords, at para­graph three wrote: "The Di­rec­tor at the time of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Di­vi­sion, Mr Rag­bir, was prompt to eval­u­ate CB­SL's ap­pli­ca­tion. Af­ter re­quest­ing and re­ceiv­ing cer­tain in­for­ma­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2000, he wrote to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry on Oc­to­ber 10, 2000 to re­port that the ap­pli­ca­tion "has met all the nec­es­sary cri­te­ria for a broad­cast­ing sta­tion" and that the "di­vi­sion has no ob­jec­tion to the grant of this li­cence."

Al­though the Di­rec­tor of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions wrote that we have met all the var­i­ous cri­te­ria for the broad­cast­ing sta­tion, the State in its at­tempt to de­ny us a li­cence, told the Privy Coun­cil that we have not sup­plied rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion. At para­graph 13 of the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's team told the judges that we have sup­plied "in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion."

The judges wrote at para­graph three: "These show that in No­vem­ber 2003 (over three years af­ter Mr Rag­bir as the Di­vi­sion's Di­rec­tor had ap­proved the CB­SL ap­pli­ca­tion and for­ward­ed it for the Min­is­ter's at­ten­tion), the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Di­vi­sion was now sug­gest­ing that in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion had been pro­vid­ed."

Many peo­ple had been crit­i­cal of Mr Roger Gas­pard SC, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for not pros­e­cut­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and for­mer min­is­ter Hed­widge Bereaux in two mat­ters–the Light­house of Our Lord Je­sus Christ in the Heights of Gua­napo off Ari­ma, and in the Ma­ha Sab­ha ra­dio li­cence case.

Ac­cord­ing to the Guardian of Sat­ur­day, March 9, Yvonne Ba­boolal wrote: "The gen­er­al call on the Face­book page is that Gas­pard must go. It is be­ing charged that pol­i­tics was be­hind the free­ing of Man­ning and Pe­na."The Ma­ha Sab­ha is con­cerned about the non-pros­e­cu­tions be­cause of our in­ter­est in our ra­dio li­cence case al­though the courts have said we have been dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. The Sun­day Ex­press of March 10 wrote an ed­i­to­r­i­al head­lined "Cu­ri­ous case of T&T's re­luc­tant pros­e­cu­tor."

The opin­ion said: "The DPP found no cause to pros­e­cute in yet an­oth­er high-pro­file mat­ter re­ferred by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, con­cern­ing the favouritism in the grant­i­ng of a ra­dio li­cence, shown by the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion to­ward Citadel Ltd and against the Ma­ha Sab­ha.

Ex­plain­ing his rea­sons not to pros­e­cute, the DPP re­hearsed his own dev­il's ad­vo­ca­cy of worst-case sce­nar­ios for the pros­e­cu­tion. He con­clud­ed that a failed pros­e­cu­tion could "se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem," with­out recog­nis­ing that re­fusal to pros­e­cute could have the same ef­fect."

More­over, the DPP found that the "trau­ma" of a crim­i­nal tri­al could be too much for an ail­ing, but still ac­tive, Patrick Man­ning to bear. He al­so re­ferred to "the age of the mat­ter," though he had him­self tak­en more than two years to an­nounce a de­ci­sion. (He had tak­en near­ly three years to de­cide on the Pe­na church case).

The DPP's record now shows a pat­tern and prac­tice of de­clin­ing to pros­e­cute all but open-and-shut cas­es. This must be a mat­ter of pub­lic con­cern in a T&T with a de­cent re­spect for democ­ra­cy which as­sures that no pub­lic fig­ure, re­gard­less of how ex­alt­ed, should be held ex­empt from crit­i­cal scruti­ny of their per­for­mance of of­fi­cial func­tions.Sub­se­quent to com­plet­ing this col­umn, the DPP re­spond­ed to the above ed­i­to­r­i­al. In our Part 2 we will analyse what he wrote.