DR HAMID GHANY

At a press con­fer­ence last week, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, raised the is­sue of the Sec­tion 34 con­tro­ver­sy once more in re­la­tion to his vis­it to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards on the mat­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley: "It in­volved the Par­lia­ment. It in­volved the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, it in­volved the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, it in­volved the Cab­i­net, it in­volved the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, it in­volved the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, it in­volved the Chief Jus­tice, and it in­volved the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent."

Miss­ing from this list were the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and the Pub­lic Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The re­al­i­ty is that Sec­tion 34 has been trans­formed in­to a cause c&ea­cute;lèbre about the fail­ure of gov­er­nance in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Gov­ern­ment has nev­er de­nied this and the ac­tion tak­en to date (the dis­missal of the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice whose port­fo­lio cov­ered this mat­ter and the re­peal of sec­tion) has been de­ci­sive.

The po­lit­i­cal di­men­sions of this have moved to em­brace a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in which the Gov­ern­ment is re­put­ed to have out­smart­ed every­body from the Pres­i­dent to the Op­po­si­tion. Along the way, some at­tempts have been made to draw par­al­lel con­spir­a­to­r­i­al sub-plots to in­clude time­lines about the ex­tra­di­tion mat­ter in­volv­ing two per­sons in­volved in the Pi­ar­co Air­port con­struc­tion mat­ter.

This line of ar­gu­ment does not put the Op­po­si­tion in a good light as it ques­tions their judg­ment and could lead peo­ple to be­lieve that if they could be out­smart­ed on this, what else could they be out­smart­ed on? It would be bet­ter for them to ac­cept col­lec­tive blame along with every­one else for this er­ror be­cause they nev­er chal­lenged it in the Sen­ate where the amend­ment was made in No­vem­ber 2011 nor in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives when the bill came back for ap­proval.

With the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions over the hori­zon, the Op­po­si­tion does not want to por­tray that they can be duped so eas­i­ly in­to pro­vid­ing sup­port for such leg­is­la­tion which opened the door for ear­ly procla­ma­tion.

Some per­sons have ar­gued that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form is the an­swer to this prob­lem. The re­al­i­ty is that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form will not ad­dress the is­sue of the po­lit­i­cal con­sen­sus of the Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dent mem­bers in the Par­lia­ment who all came to the unan­i­mous con­clu­sion that it was good leg­is­la­tion and that it should be ap­proved.

The up­roar caused by a news­pa­per head­line that there ex­ist­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty for two per­sons in­volved in ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port in the mid-1990s were like­ly to walk free put a dif­fer­ent twist on all of this.

All of a sud­den, the key mat­ter was the ad­vice ten­dered by the Cab­i­net to the Pres­i­dent to im­ple­ment the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34. The Op­po­si­tion said that they were giv­en as­sur­ances that this would not hap­pen. This line of ar­gu­ment was de­signed to sep­a­rate the Op­po­si­tion from tak­ing any po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Sec­tion 34 as op­posed to their po­lit­i­cal sup­port for the en­tire act that con­tained Sec­tion 34.

We know now that the Gov­ern­ment moved with dis­patch to re­peal Sec­tion 34 and that the Op­po­si­tion once again joined the Gov­ern­ment in vot­ing for the re­peal. What was in­ter­est­ing was the fact that five in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors re­fused to vote for its re­peal and they in­sist­ed that it was good law.

The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, through the act­ing Pres­i­dent, has al­ready tak­en a po­si­tion in the mat­ter that has laid it di­rect­ly at the feet of the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice who was dis­missed by the Prime Min­is­ter. The is­sues raised by Dr Row­ley in his vis­it with Pres­i­dent Richards last week sug­gest that he is ask­ing the sub­stan­tive Pres­i­dent to re­view what the act­ing Pres­i­dent ear­li­er re­viewed.

Nowhere has Dr Row­ley asked for the pub­lic ser­vants in the cab­i­net sec­re­tari­at and the of­fice of the chief par­lia­men­tary coun­sel who car­ried out law­ful in­struc­tions to be in­clud­ed in his shop­ping list of per­sons for this com­pre­hen­sive ex­am­i­na­tion from the in­struc­tion ap­proved by the Cab­i­net on Au­gust 9, 2012 and the con­fir­ma­tion of it by the Cab­i­net on Au­gust 16, 2012.

We know that Her­bert Vol­ney was the act­ing at­tor­ney gen­er­al from Ju­ly 2 to Ju­ly 20, 2012; that Gan­ga Singh was the act­ing at­tor­ney gen­er­al from Ju­ly 20 un­til ear­ly Au­gust; and that Prakash Ra­mad­har was act­ing min­is­ter of jus­tice from Au­gust 15, 2012. We know that there is a con­tro­ver­sy about the pow­ers of the Of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that seeks to go be­yond his port­fo­lio as­sign­ment which did not in­clude the leg­is­la­tion con­tain­ing Sec­tion 34.

So what new is like­ly to emerge? The PNM has tak­en a de­ci­sion to press re­lent­less­ly for­ward to search for some­thing new as they gen­uine­ly be­lieve that there is more ly­ing un­der the Sec­tion 34 soil than has al­ready been ex­ca­vat­ed. Are they an­gry that they feel out­smart­ed or are they seek­ing to keep it alive as an elec­toral phan­tom as we move in­to 2013?