Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley sug­gest­ed yes­ter­day the procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011 was a pos­si­ble $2 mil­lion pay­back for two busi­ness­men who were once UNC fi­nanciers. He said so dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's spe­cial de­bate in Par­lia­ment to re­peal that sec­tion of the act.

Row­ley al­so de­mand­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­plain why her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Cab­i­net ad­vised Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to pro­claim the sec­tion. The act was in­tend­ed to elim­i­nate pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries in the mag­is­trates court. "But the ben­e­fi­cia­ries known to us to­day, who have ap­proached the court are known par­ty fi­nanciers who have iden­ti­fied them­selves as such in their own plead­ings and for whom I have seen a cheque for $2 mil­lion to their par­ty in the last elec­tion," Row­ley told leg­is­la­tors.

He did not call the names of the fi­nanciers. How­ev­er, two for­mer fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-busi­ness­men Steve Fer­gu­son and Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh-were seen as im­me­di­ate ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the new­ly-pro­claimed law. The two are want­ed in the US to an­swer fraud and mon­ey-laun­der­ing charges. Row­ley said apart from Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son, there would be oth­er ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the law.

He said the sin­gle most im­por­tant mat­ter to be ex­plained in the en­tire de­bate was why the sec­tion was se­cret­ly pro­claimed dur­ing the gold­en ju­bilee cel­e­bra­tions two weeks ago. He said many ob­servers were de­mand­ing to know why that sec­tion of the bill was pro­claimed. "Who did it? Who ad­vanced this to the Cab­i­net? Why did they do that, and why did the Cab­i­net agree to give this ben­e­fit in this way?"?he de­mand­ed of Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

He told the Gov­ern­ment:?"It is you who did this a few days ago. I am ask­ing you now why did you do it?" Row­ley said it was the Cab­i­net which or­dered the procla­ma­tion of the sec­tion and not the Par­lia­ment. "And un­less all of you could tell this Par­lia­ment why you did this to the sat­is­fac­tion of the peo­ple of T&T, you all stand ac­cused of ac­tion to ben­e­fit peo­ple who are try­ing to evade the courts," he said.

The procla­ma­tion of the sec­tion of the act was made pub­lic in an ex­clu­sive Sun­day Guardian re­port on Sep­tem­ber 9. He said the Gov­ern­ment ef­fec­tive­ly gave cer­tain peo­ple "a head start to go to the court" by keep­ing the procla­ma­tion qui­et. "This was done in the dead of the night of the cel­e­bra­tion of the an­niver­sary... and to add in­sult to in­jury, it comes in­to ef­fect on the day of In­de­pen­dence it­self. The un­kind­est cut of all," he added.

Row­ley said the mat­ter would reach the Privy Coun­cil be­cause peo­ple would chal­lenge it. He al­so not­ed that Sec­tion 34 was not con­tained in the orig­i­nal bill. Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion did not give un­qual­i­fied sup­port for the leg­is­la­tion when it was de­bat­ed in No­vem­ber last year but sup­port­ed it on con­di­tion that oth­er re­lat­ed mea­sures would be im­ple­ment­ed be­fore it was pro­claimed.