Geisha Kow­lessar

The ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan that he is on­ly versed in civ­il mat­ters is weak and an em­bar­rass­ment, says PNM Sen­a­tor and se­nior at­tor­ney Faris Al-Rawi. At Mon­day's open­ing of the law term of the In­dus­tri­al Court at St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, Ram­lo­gan said: "I have nev­er done a crim­i­nal case, save my first year in prac­tice, for all my years of prac­tice, and I make that point al­though the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is the le­gal ad­vis­er to the Cab­i­net, when we cre­at­ed the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the crim­i­nal port­fo­lio was as­signed to that min­istry and the gazetted al­lo­ca­tion of min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty placed crim­i­nal leg­is­la­tion and the re­form of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem un­der that par­tic­u­lar min­istry.

"That meant, there­fore, that the staff with the ex­per­tise in crim­i­nal law will go to that min­istry." He added he did not have any crim­i­nal lawyers in his min­istry. Al-Rawi, how­ev­er, said Ram­lo­gan's state­ments were tan­ta­mount to an ad­mis­sion he was in­ca­pable of car­ry­ing out the role and func­tion of his of­fice.

He added that Ram­lo­gan had al­so set a neg­a­tive prece­dent for new Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore, who Al-Rawi de­scribed as a civ­il at­tor­ney. Say­ing he at­tend­ed law school with both Ram­lo­gan and Moore, Al-Rawi added: "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's state­ments con­sti­tute a fur­ther em­bar­rass­ment to the new Jus­tice Min­is­ter as what he stat­ed is that it must now be a re­quire­ment for a Jus­tice Min­is­ter to have ex­pe­ri­ence in crim­i­nal law. Ms Moore is not a crim­i­nal at­tor­ney. She is a civ­il at­tor­ney.

There­fore, Mr Ram­lo­gan, by his own ad­mis­sion, has stat­ed that Ms Moore is in­ca­pable of car­ry­ing out her role." He said in the 44 acts pro­claimed in Par­lia­ment un­der the stew­ard­ship of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Ram­lo­gan was in­stru­men­tal in pi­lot­ing sev­er­al key pieces of leg­is­la­tion which heav­i­ly in­volved crim­i­nal law. He said those in­clud­ed:

• The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Re­mand) Act 2011

• Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Bail and Kid­nap­ping) Act, 2011

• An­ti-Gang Act, 2011

• The Bail Amend­ment Act 2011

• The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and the To­ba­go and An­ti-Ter­ror­ism) Act, 2012

• The Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act

Al-Rawi said nowhere in Hansard was it stat­ed that Ram­lo­gan lacked con­fi­dence as at­tor­ney gen­er­al to car­ry out his role in su­per­vis­ing crim­i­nal as­pects of leg­is­la­ture. Say­ing he took no plea­sure in per­son­al­ly em­bar­rass­ing Ram­lo­gan, Al-Rawi said the PP Gov­ern­ment has put it­self in a po­si­tion of shame and giv­en the wide scope of the role of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al, the buck must stop with him.