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Friday, July 25, 2025

PM must act swiftly but surely on AG

by

20150201

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is right that it is her du­ty to get all the in­for­ma­tion she can with re­gard to the al­le­ga­tions of wit­ness tam­per­ing that have been made against her At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and that she should then make a de­ci­sion in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T.

The mat­ters be­fore her are in­deed "very grave al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing three very im­por­tant of­fi­cers in our land," At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty David West. In join­ing the Guardian's call for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to re­sign, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day not­ed that "the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has the abil­i­ty to ad­verse­ly af­fect and un­der­mine the pub­lic per­cep­tion of and con­fi­dence in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al."

It is al­so note­wor­thy that the port­fo­lios of all three men touch on the main­te­nance of law and or­der in the coun­try and there­fore Mr Ram­lo­gan's con­tin­u­a­tion in of­fice for much longer could un­der­mine con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem and law en­force­ment.Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then, shoul­ders the very se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

Nat­ur­al jus­tice re­quires that she hear di­rect­ly from the three peo­ple in­volved. While the min­is­ters are oblig­ed to re­spond to her re­quests for in­for­ma­tion, there may be some hes­i­tance on the part of Mr West–as there was when he re­ject­ed a re­quest from Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Prakash Ra­mad­har for a meet­ing last week.

In this case, the Prime Min­is­ter must care­ful­ly read his var­i­ous state­ments in this mat­ter–and in par­tic­u­lar his now con­tro­ver­sial state­ment in which he al­leged that an at­tempt was made to get him to with­draw his wit­ness state­ment in a Sec­tion 34 defama­tion mat­ter. In en­sur­ing that she ful­fills the re­quire­ments of nat­ur­al jus­tice, the Prime Min­is­ter should al­so be aware of the need to move swift­ly to bring this mat­ter to a close.

It would be a com­plete­ly un­sat­is­fac­to­ry state of af­fairs for this mat­ter to be hang­ing over the heads of two of her min­is­ters for much longer than three days.It would be com­plete­ly un­sat­is­fac­to­ry, for ex­am­ple, for the Prime Min­is­ter to take the view that this is a po­lice mat­ter and that she must await the com­ple­tion of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

A very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion has been re­port­ed to the po­lice. To en­sure com­plete fair­ness in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions now in progress, every ef­fort must be made to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­ter­fer­ence or ma­nip­u­la­tion or even the per­cep­tion of in­ter­fer­ence or ma­nip­u­la­tion.Even the tini­est per­cep­tion that all is not be­ing done above board will taint the probe and any fur­ther ac­tion that may be re­quired once it is com­plet­ed.

While Mr Ram­lo­gan has is­sued a brief state­ment promis­ing to co-op­er­ate ful­ly in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he looms large as the cen­tral fig­ure in the mat­ter. His abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly func­tion in the of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in the midst of this con­tro­ver­sy is al­ready be­ing called in­to ques­tion.

The fact that a gen­er­al elec­tion is just months away may be weigh­ing heav­i­ly in the prime min­is­ter's de­lib­er­a­tions in this mat­ter. How­ev­er, it is not enough for her to ex­press con­cern pub­licly and promise ac­tion. She must be seen to act firm­ly and de­ci­sive­ly in this mat­ter.Her ad­min­is­tra­tion can­not af­ford even the slight­est hint that po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy is tak­ing prece­dence over mat­ters that have such se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the smooth func­tion­ing of the coun­try.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, a sea­soned politi­cian who holds the rank of se­nior coun­sel, must use her con­sid­er­able qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence to bal­ance jus­tice with firm­ness, with­out fear or favour, mal­ice or ill-will.


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