Sascha Wil­son

Lead­ing crim­i­nal at­tor­ney Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan is the Op­po­si­tion's choice for pres­i­dent.  

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) con­firmed in a press state­ment on Sat­ur­day that they have re­quest­ed the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er Khan. In a brief in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment, Khan said he was "elat­ed and ready to serve the coun­try."  

Christine Kangaloo

ABRAHAM DIAZ

This comes one day af­ter the Op­po­si­tion re­ject­ed the Gov­ern­ment's nom­i­nee of Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kanga­loo.

The UNC's re­lease stat­ed, "Yes­ter­day (Fri­day), we in­di­cat­ed our non-sup­port for Ms Kan­ga­loo on the ba­sis, in­ter alia, that as a sit­ting PNM politi­cian un­der the hand of the Prime Min­is­ter, se­ri­ous is­sues would arise about ap­par­ent bias in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.  

"We stat­ed our will­ing­ness to work to­wards a con­sen­sus nom­i­nee. To this end, we have pro­posed that Mr Khan be con­sid­ered as the nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent. Giv­en Mr Khan’s fierce­ly in­de­pen­dent track record, sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence with­in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty as well as his dy­nam­ic con­tri­bu­tions to our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, we are of the view that he is a suit­able can­di­date for this dis­tin­guished of­fice."

 At a press con­fer­ence at her Charles Street of­fice in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, de­scribed the move to nom­i­nate Kan­ga­loo as an at­tempt to un­der­mine the democ­ra­cy of T&T.

Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar addresses members of the media during a press conference at her office on Friday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that the UNC's cau­cus met Thurs­day night and de­cid­ed that it would not sup­port a sit­ting politi­cian. She said she in­formed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of this dur­ing their meet­ing on Fri­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. Fol­low­ing the meet­ing, she con­sult­ed with her team and ad­vised the Chief Whip David Lee to com­mu­ni­cate with the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Camille Robin­son-Reg­is "that the Op­po­si­tion unan­i­mous­ly re­jects Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo as the nom­i­nee for Pres­i­dent."  

Khan, who is in his 70s, was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Crim­i­nal Law As­so­ci­a­tion last year and is one of the most con­tro­ver­sial crim­i­nal at­tor­neys. He is known for his straight­for­ward and no-non­sense ap­proach to na­tion­al is­sues and on many oc­ca­sions has pub­licly chal­lenged de­ci­sions and state­ments made by the Gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion mem­bers.

Last Ju­ly Khan slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for what he termed a base­less at­tack af­ter she ac­cused some lawyers of "grov­el­ling" to sup­port At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour in a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in him by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion.

 He al­so sug­gest­ed that she re­turn her silk which was giv­en to her in 2012 while she was the sit­ting prime min­is­ter. A few days pri­or to his pub­lic spat with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Khan had ad­vised Ar­mour to re­sign due to the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the same is­sue.

Khan, how­ev­er, has pub­licly stat­ed his sup­port for the UNC and Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the po­lit­i­cal leader.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

For a pres­i­dent to be se­lect­ed all nom­i­nees must be nom­i­nat­ed by 12 MPs each.

"The nom­i­nees must then sign the form in­di­cat­ing their con­sent. These forms must be de­liv­ered to the Elec­toral Col­lege Sec­re­tari­at by Jan­u­ary 10," Prof Hamid Ghany said.

 The Elec­toral Col­lege will meet on Jan­u­ary 20.

"If there is on­ly one nom­i­nee that per­son will be de­clared elect­ed. If there is more than one nom­i­nee then there will be a se­cret bal­lot and the per­son with the most votes will be de­clared elect­ed," Ghany said.

PM Row­ley said that Kan­ga­loo was em­i­nent­ly qual­i­fied for the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent, with po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence that gives her the grav­i­tas and strength to act with con­fi­dence in the post.

De­fend­ing the se­lec­tion against con­cerns of Kan­ga­loo be­ing an ac­tive politi­cian, Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment had giv­en the Op­po­si­tion the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­ply five sig­na­tures on the 12-slot nom­i­na­tion form for a can­di­date to­mor­row. But if that is not avail­able, Gov­ern­ment will have no choice but to fill out all 12 slots.

The term of in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes ends March 2.

Pres­i­dent Weekes is cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion and is due back Thurs­day. Kan­ga­loo is act­ing as Pres­i­dent.

About Is­rael Khan

 *Khan is head of Justi­tia Om­nibus Law Cham­bers and spe­cialis­es in crim­i­nal law serv­ing as a de­fence at­tor­ney and spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

*He ap­peared in sev­er­al high-pro­file cas­es and at present is the most ex­pe­ri­enced ac­tive ad­vo­cate at­tor­ney at the crim­i­nal bar with 43 years un­der his belt.  

 *Khan stud­ied law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and Hugh Wood­ing Law School and al­so grad­u­at­ed with first-class ho­n­ours in po­lit­i­cal sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

*He was award­ed silk in 2000.

*Khan has been tu­tor­ing at Hugh Wood­ing Law School for 33 years, and he al­so lec­tured at Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

  *He was award­ed pres­ti­gious recog­ni­tion by the Glob­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Peo­ple of In­di­an Ori­gin (GO­PIO) for his strug­gle and even­tu­al vic­to­ry in the lo­cal court for the fun­da­men­tal right to wear a Nehru Suit, 2014.

*Be­tween 1987-1991 served as an al­der­man in the East St George Coun­ty Coun­cil and chair­man of the NAR St Au­gus­tine Con­stituen­cy.

*He head­ed the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion, Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry, Po­lice Pro­tec­tive Com­pen­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and Firearms Ap­peal Board.

*He sat on Com­mis­sions of In­quiry and has sev­er­al law pub­li­ca­tions.

What the peo­ple say:

David Ab­du­lah

Move­ment of So­cial Jus­tice David Ab­du­lah, how­ev­er, was not im­pressed by the Gov­ern­ment's or the Op­po­si­tion's nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent.

  He ex­plained that giv­en the ex­ist­ing po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and Con­sti­tu­tion of the coun­try, it does not make "a lot of dif­fer­ence as to who is pres­i­dent."

 "Both the PNM and the UNC seem to be very lim­it­ed in try­ing to put for­ward a can­di­date to be elect­ed for pres­i­dent," Ab­du­lah added.

 While he has noth­ing against Kan­ga­loo or Khan, he said their de­ci­sions will seem to be lack­ing trust and con­fi­dence by the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens giv­en the po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion in the coun­try.

Dr Win­ford James

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said while Khan is a well-re­spect­ed se­nior coun­sel, he be­lieves that he will lose be­cause the PNM out­num­bers UNC in the Elec­toral Col­lege.

"His par­tic­i­pa­tion is part of the rou­tine to elect a pres­i­dent. The Gov­ern­ment al­ways gets its way, but Khan is a high­ly knowl­edge­able and care­ful at­tor­ney. Every suc­cess," James said.

Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said Khan fits the bill. "I have been con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ing for a non-po­lit­i­cal can­di­date, no- par­ti­san, cer­tain­ly I've been against a cer­tain politi­cian, in par­tic­u­lar, as­sum­ing that post, so, I think Is­rael Khan in some ways fit that bill. He is not po­lit­i­cal. He is an at­tor­ney at law and I think that he would un­der­stand the laws which the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date should know, should be aware of, fa­mil­iar with and be ca­pa­ble of ap­ply­ing the law, so I don't think that it is a bad choice re­al­ly."

(re­port­ing by Rhon­dor Dowlat)